When flooding hit the temple town of Mantralayam at the end of September, the town became just scattered rooftops in a sea, as water swept over the entire area.  In some places the water was ten feet deep.

Mantralayam lies on the banks of the Tungabhadra River, in the Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh, in southern India.

Due to exceptionally heavy monsoon rains all the rivers in the area have overrun their banks, and the land is flooded for thousands of square miles.

The two branches of the Krishna River have risen to levels last seen over one hundred years ago.  The Krishna River is one of longest rivers in India (1300 kilometers, 808 miles), cutting across the south nearly from one ocean to the other. It normally can reach a depth of 75 feet (rivers in India are gigantic); with the current floods it is much deeper.

The highway between two major cities, Hyderabad and Bangalore, disappeared under seven feet of water. People and animals have died in mudslides.

Torrents of water rushed through the Srisailam Dam drowning the communities below it.  A water commission station was washed away in a fifty-foot (16.5 meters) deep surge of water. Whole villages are gone too.

The water is now subsiding in Mantralayam and other areas, but the circumstances of both people and animals are desperate.

Pradeep Nath, President of The Visakha Society for the Protection and Care of Animals, wrote on October 4 that throughout the district of Kurnool, there were 40,000 people on rooftops, calling out for help.  Around 500 cows have died.

To view a slide show of the floods and people who managed to flee the area on foot, some carrying their animals with them, go to The Hindu :

http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article29834.ece

VSPCA sends in flood relief workers

Relief workers from VSPCA have been deployed, and are waiting on high ground outside the town of Mantralayam to be able to enter the area. They watch government helicopters flying over on their way to drop food packages for people stranded on the rooftops of their houses or on hills. 15,000 people there are in need of help. In the distance they can see dogs and cows who have made it to higher ground and who urgently need help too. The helicopters will only help people. So the VSPCA team are really hoping to be allowed to enter the area soon to be able to help the animals.

The scope of the disaster

India is a land of recurring floods, but these particular floods, following on the heels of a severe drought, are the worst seen in one hundred years in parts of the two southern states Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

The monsoons, normal for October, have dumped unprecedented amounts of rainfall, leaving many square miles of crop lands under water, engulfing houses, destroying rails and roads, ruining fields of cotton and other crops, obliterating power stations, and threatening the lives of thousands of farm animals.

Villagers choosing to stay with their cows

An enormous government evacuation was underway in the hours before the floods struck, but many villagers did not want to leave their animals.

To the north of the Kurnool District lies the district of Nalgonda.  The October 4 issue of The Hindu reported that many government relief camps had been set up there, but the villagers refused to leave their cattle behind to seek refuge in the camps.  After unsuccessfully pleading with the villagers to evacuate, officials eventually agreed to set up a cattle camp near the villages to provide dry fodder for the cows.

Further east, in the Krishna District, 350 cows were moved to a shelter at Patamatalanka, at Vijayawadi, where they could be cared for and given dry fodder.

Since September 30, more than 200 people have been killed by floods in Karnataka (to the west) and Andhra Pradesh (to the East).  300,000 people have been left homeless, as their homes were swept away in the floods. On every small hill, people are gathered, along with the cows, dogs, cats, and goats that have managed to escape to higher ground.  There they are waiting for help—for food and water or to be lifted out of danger—and gradually government help is reaching the people.

The animals will be helped too, as soon as the VSPCA team is allowed in to help them—which is expected to happen soon.

The animals may be injured or sick, suffering from hunger or thirst.  They need vaccinations to protect them from the diseases that arise in the unclean flood waters.  They need their wounds treated, and they need antibiotics to recover.  They also urgently need food and clean water. 

VSPCA flood relief operations in 2007 and 2008

The disaster relief teams of the VSPCA were able to save many animals’ lives during the 2008 floods in Orissa, a little way to the north—and during the devastating floods in Andhra Pradesh in 2007.

In Orissa, they rescued dogs and cats from flooded city streets, and in Andhra Pradesh, despite the washed out roads, they managed somehow to travel to remote villages to save the animals there.  After the 2004 tsunami, they set up regular routes among the villages for around 50 miles along the shore of the Bay of Bengal, providing on-going vet care and food for village animals.

Pradeep Nath hopes to be able to put into place up to seven teams of relief workers.

He has written to Best Friends, “The other place that we also want to enter is Mehbubnagar District and the third is Vijayawada [a city further east in the Krishna District].   The rains have stopped, but the water is receding very slowly.  The National Highway has broken and supplies are cut off. Therefore, only those that have access to helicopters are able to search and do something, but their efforts are for humans.  

"I desperately want to go in and see the damage and rescue animals, even while the flooding continues. We are not allowed in yet, but soon we will be.”

How you can help

To help the animals caught in the disastrous flooding in India, please donate to

http://www.vspca.org/donate.php

Photos: VSPCA:

Top photo: Sarada Buddhiraju, VSPCA Shelter Manager with one of the dogs, Kennedy

Second and third photos: These are from previous disasters.  We will post new photos as soon as we have them.