Sunday’s mini-tornado, which devastated vast areas of Jalpaiguri and some parts of adjoining Alipurduar and Cooch Behar in 10 minutes, claimed four lives and left over a hundred people injured. Many of those who witnessed the violent storm and hardly survived with their family members were in trauma even after 24 hours of the natural disaster.
Those who witnessed the swirling column of wind that destroyed their homes and injured their kin claimed that they couldn’t recall facing such a superstorm ever. The Telegraph spoke to two of many survivors of Sunday’s tornado who described how they were lucky to be alive after the disaster.
Name: Swadesh Das, a 57-year-old farmer.
Resident of: Dakshin Kamshing village under Alipurduar-I Block in Alipurduar.
Impact: His tin-roof house was blown away and his wife was injured.
It was around 3.45 pm on Sunday when I returned home after working in my paddy field. It would not have been more than 15 minutes when I discovered the haze of black clouds cover the sky. I thought it was Kalbaishakhi (Nor’wester), which is usual at this time. I was proven wrong within five minutes when it hit our village. We realised that the storm was not a mere Kalbaishakhi.
To save our lives, my wife, 20-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter and I took shelter under the bed. But the strong gust of wind blew away our tin roof and left us exposed to the sky. As the storm raged, we ran out of our homes and took shelter at a building of the Sishu Siksha Kendra (SSK).
As we started running through the storm, a flying piece of bamboo hit my wife Bulbuli on the head. It was a stroke of chance that she received minor head injuries. Now we have been rendered homeless. When I returned home early on Monday morning and saw our tin walls missing, I realised that we had made the right decision to run out of our home in the middle of the storm.
I think we could have lost our lives if we had not taken shelter at the SSK. We lost our home, clothes, utensils, and many other things to the storm. I covered whatever was left of household commodities with a tarpaulin that I received from the local administration on Monday morning.
Name: Gopal Roy, 46-year-old mason
Resident of: Kalibari, Burnis gram panchayat, Mainaguri in Jalpaiguri.
I was taking a nap with my two minor sons inside my home on Sunday afternoon when I felt something slamming on my tin-made roof and wall. My wife and elderly mother were also resting on the floor. It was as if someone was trying to lift my roof and walls.
Before I understood anything, the roof flew away, leaving us uncovered. As we tried to take shelter under a wooden cot, one of the tin walls fell on the head of my 11-year-old son. Another sheet of tin that flew down on our floor injured my six-year-old son, too.
We had nothing to do, but wait till the situation was normalised. It is not only
Roy but at least 300 families in his neighbourhood lost their shelters in a 10-minute storm that hit the area on Sunday. All those who lost their homes had taken shelter at two safe homes — Burnis High School and Topamari High School.
Reporting by Anirban Chowdhury in Alipurduar and our Jalpaiguri correspondent