It has been two weeks since devastating floods hit Srinagar and some other parts of the Kashmir valley. Floods also caused much havoc in some parts of the Jammu province, most notably in Rajouri, Udhampur and Poonch districts. Looking back at these floods and the devastation that they caused, not only in terms of loss of property and life, but also that hundreds of thousands in the flood affected areas have been shifted to relief centres. The met department had predicted heavy rains in the State and many parts of South Kashmir were flooded a few days before they caused their fury in Srinagar. Even with such forecasts and actual warnings in the form of floods in South Kashmir, the State Govt remained a mute spectator to the impending disaster in Srinagar. There were no warnings and the State did not use the resources at its disposal to move people in the danger zone to safer areas.
Even after the floods struck, the State Govt was caught napping. It did not have any system in place to deal with such exigency. The Chief Minister Omar Abdullah himself admitted that he had lost complete contact with his entire administration in the first 24 hours of these floods. But even after the initial shock, the affected people did not find any support from the State Govt, neither in the form of rescue nor relief. Infact if it was not for local rescue volunteers the situation on ground would have been far worse than it presently is. Even after the Govt failed to rescue people, it did not make any serious efforts to reach out to people and help with the relief work. The relief work has also been taken up selfless volunteers, NGOs, Masjid committees and most notably the Gurdwaras. In fact the Gurdwaras lead the way in as far as providing shelter and food to the rescued people was concerned.
People outside J & K, both Kashmiris and non Kashmiris have been very active in organizing relief supplies to Kashmir and the flood affected areas in Jammu province. If the flood victims were left at the mercy of the State Govt and had it not been for the thousands of selfless volunteers, both in Kashmir and outside, the State would have been staring at a much uglier tragedy than it presently is facing.
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