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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

NOVEMBER 2005

Visakha SPCA digs out after floods, fights disease outbreaks

VISAKHAPATNAM––Already hit by flooding after a September 19 cyclone, the Visakha SPCA was inundated twice more by further cyclones before the end of October.


Monsoon rains and occasional cyclones are part of the normal weather cycle along the Bay of Bengal, but fall 2005 brought the region triple the usual rainfall.


Visakha SPCA outreach team at work (VSPCA)

The impact was felt as far south as Chennai, where the St. Thomas Mount Animal Birth Control Center was badly damaged by flash flooding, Blue Cross of India chief executive Chinny Krishna told ANIMAL PEOPLE, and part of the Blue Cross shelter at Guindy was briefly awash.

 

“Fortunately, thanks to our volunteer Shanthi, all animals in the lower-lying enclosures were moved out to the main building,” Krishna said.


The Visakha SPCA began clean-up and rebuilding at the same time as extending emergency aid to surrounding areas, then had to start over after the destruction of a retaining wall by the first flood allowed a second and third flood.

Despite the setbacks, Visakha SPCA founder Pradeep Kumar Nath saw the outreach as a first priority. “Just as after the December 2004 tsunami,” Nath explained, when the Visakha SPCA fielded three rescue teams funded by ANIMAL PEOPLE almost immediately, “giving medical attention to the villagers’ domestic animals allows us to introduce our dog sterilization program, and educate against animal sacrifice, wildlife trading, and killing dogs.
“Months of hard rain have weakened many animals and death stalks all around,” Nath continued. “Specifically, foot and mouth disease. We can control it at the shelter through our intensive efforts, but it is difficult to get the farmers properly educated in time for them to save their own animals. And government help is sporadic or nonexistent.


“Cattle are dying right in front of us,” Nath said. “Unlike in the west, farmers here will not allow infected cattle to be killed. We try to save the cattle with antibiotic injections, vitamins, cleaning and dressing the wounds on their feet, and asking the farmers to give their animals a warm liquid diet.”


Helping the Visakha SPCA to rebuild, recover, and assist the villagers were the Animal Help Emergency And Disaster team recently formed by Rahul Sehgal of Ahmedabad; Darmesh Solanki of People for Animals in Mumbai; several staff from Animal Aid in Udaipur; four representatives from the Tsunami Memorial Animal Welfare Trust in Sri Lanka; and Sherry Grant, Asia field rep for Humane Society International.


Among their first jobs was safely containing seven cobras who had washed into the Visakha SPCA premises.


“A handful of local workers are racing against time and weather to finish shelters for the cows,” Grant e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE. “I asked Pradeep ‘Why don’t you hire more workers?’ By the end of the day it was clear that the weather and the work [removing deep mud and manure] put the laborers off, no matter how much he paid them. He pays over three times the going rate, but they come, they leave, and they don’t show up the next day.


“We agreed that the traditional method of women scooping up one rice bag of muck at a time and carrying it away on their heads was out. What was needed was heavy equipment. We found a guy with a loader.”


“Construction in future has to be done on higher platform,” said Nath. “The biggest problem is that the government never will give us good land, and the land we now occupy was the best available. I thought the stream that flooded us was a bonus, as we need 5,000 litres per day, and had good water during the severe drought of just three years ago. We built initially on five feet of fill, and now another four feet is required. The wall needs to be stronger, maybe engineered like a bridge.


“We will build a much better shelter for the animals, and better than that, a paradise for them,” Nath pledged.

CONTACT: Visakha SPCA, 26-15-200 Main Road, Visakhapatnam 530001, India; telephone: 91-891-564759;
<vspcadeep@yahoo.co.in>