Cyclone Michaung and the resultant heavy rains which led to flooding impacted almost everyone irrespective of their economic status, but for those with lesser privileges inhabiting Chennai’s suburbs it was deleterious, making them feel further alienated. 

Many residents of resettlement colonies on the shorelines of water bodies and the wetlands in Perumbakkam were left to fend for themselves in the initial days when they needed help the most. This has led to them pointing fingers at politicians and administrators for favouring people residing in affluent areas. They allege that high-rise apartments in Chennai got all the attention of the local bodies, corporations, and the government during the crisis.

On December 9, five days after Cyclone Michaung hit Chennai and other coastal districts of north Tamil Nadu, TNM visited affected areas in Perumbakkam, a Chennai suburb located along Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) in Chengalpattu district.

Residents of resettlement colonies spread across 256 blocks in Ezhil Nagar say they were literally abandoned and had to manage everything on their own. Many residents here whom TNM spoke to felt discriminated against even when help finally reached them because of unequal distribution of food and relief material.

Read: Marooned in Perumbakkam: Residents struggle without water, food, power for 2 days

A resettlement plan gone awry

The resettlement colony in Perumbakkam was built on marshland, near the banks of Buckingham Canal in the low-lying, flood-prone zones. Ironically, the residents who live in these eight-storied buildings on both sides of Ezhil Nagar Main Road were evicted from the slums alongside the Adyar and Cooum Rivers after the 2015 floods. Ezhil means beauty in Tamil. But this is not to be seen anywhere in the lives of people who reside here.

They were uprooted from the city and settled in 21,000 tenements in 2015 and 2016. The settlement was already bereft of basic amenities and the cyclone and flood turned everything upside down. They had to wait for three long days without electricity and water before any sign of relief came from the state government.   

As with other parts of the city constructed in the low-lying areas, the ground floors of the resettlement houses flooded during the cyclone. The residents have alleged that the relief materials from the government did not reach all houses and that food pockets were carried in garbage bins for distribution among the residents. Bharath, a visual communication student from the settlement, said the residents protested against the way the corporation officials treated them. “They carried food pockets in the garbage bin. Who will accept that food? We had to fight even for our dignity,” he said. Bharath and his family members were displaced from Kotturpuram to Perumbakkam in 2016. 

Thangam, a resident in J block, said that if she had been the resident of an affluent area, she would not have to struggle for five days to get back to normalcy. “If we were in Kotturpuram, we would have got all relief materials and the road would’ve been cleared of the debris within two days. We have already been chased out of the city. Since we are now 30 km away from the city, it was convenient for them to ignore our needs,” she said. 

Speaking to TNM, Ajitha Shree, a transwoman resident from the resettlement area, said that no preventive measures could save the Perumbakkam resettlement colonies. “They promised that the bridge on the canal which carries the water from the Thazhambur lake would save us. During the Vardah cyclone, the water did not enter the ground floors. But the Michaung cyclone caused heavy flow in the canal and our areas started to flood. There is no infrastructure in the blocks that would ensure easy draining of floodwater. Once it enters the settlement, it takes weeks for us to get back to normal,” she said. 

Shoban Babu, another resident from the settlement, said not all residents received relief and help from the government. “The local politicians played a crucial role in ensuring that their supporters got all relief material. It led to the situation where people with disabilities got nothing,” he alleged. Shoban Babu asked the government to directly assist the residents house-wise so that all are equally benefited.    

Bharathy, a resident who lives on the ground floor, shared the ordeal she went through during the cyclone. As a mother to two sons, she had to plan everything within minutes before the rainwater hit her tiny one-room apartment which had not enough space for a family of four.

“I had no time to salvage anything from the apartment. All I did was to bring my sons to the first floor where we stayed for three days. It was frustrating and equally exhausting to stay in someone’s place which was also tiny like ours. They also had to face the same difficulties,” she said. They used flood water mixed with sewage for toilet purposes. “No one came here till the water receded and we cleaned our houses. Even for the metro water, we had to stage a protest,” she said.

Bharathy said that she does not want to live here anymore and demanded that the government settle them back in areas located inside the city from where they were displaced. “If anything happens there, people would at least see us and consider our plight. But Perumbakkam is invisible, so are our plights,” she said. 

Chengalpattu district collector AR Rahul Nadh said that district administration ensured that every family of 21,000 tenements got all the essentials. "We provided a dry ration of rice, lentils, and masala powder to all the 21,000 families last week. We also provided 1.5 lakh food pockets to them in the initial days of flood and 70,000 milk pockets on a daily basis," he said. According to him, they had sent relief materials with police protection to ensure residents of Perumbakkam resettlement colonies get them. The district administration has reached out to Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) seeking Rs 100 crore to improve the condition of resettlement colonies. 

Plight of residents of Embassy Residency

Residents of high-rise apartments like Embassy Residency were better placed than people in resettlement colonies. With most of them taking to social media for help, attention was turned on their plight. However, since the water levels were high, it was only on the third day that most rescue boats and trucks reached the apartment. Eventually, 95 percent of the 5,000 residents who inhabit the 1,516 apartments in Embassy Residency had to move out as the basement remained inundated affecting water treatment and sewage functioning.

“We are literally walking on the water. It is just one foot of concrete that separates us from gallons of water that damaged 150 cars and many bikes parked in the basement,” said Karthik, a resident of Embassy Residency. 

When TNM visited the Embassy Residency, residents who stayed put too had started to move out as flooding in the basement affected the functioning of the Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) and Water Treatment Plant (WTP). As on December 9 afternoon, the apartment’s residents’ association and local panchayat had deployed eight motors to pump out the water from the ground floor.

Some of the residents blamed the successive All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) governments for approving the construction of these high-rise buildings on marshlands.

“They are the ones who put our lives on the line. The builders also took us for granted. All of us are not privileged or able-bodied to face a crisis like this,” said a resident of the Embassy Apartment. He said the residents had spent lakhs of rupees to have the roof over our heads, not to run to hotels, spending Rs 50,000 to 1 lakh every time it floods. “The association should have asked for help from the government but they do not want to disrepute the builders as any negative news would cause harm to their reputation would reflect in their business,” he said. The residents who stayed in the apartment used the water that inundated the basement for bathroom purposes.  

Haripriya, president of the association, said they got all the support they needed to return to normalcy from the state government, local body and builders. “We should not make any false claims about the government’s effort,” she said. 

Read: ‘Aren’t we voters?’: Chennai’s Semmencherry residents fume over apathy during floods