Her home was in Kotapalli Mandal of Kurnool district
Photo Credit: Sam Spickett
When Bharathi, 15, came home from her hostel during Eid holidays 2009, she did not imagine that she would not be going back to school. Her home was in Kotapalli Mandal of Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh, where most of the 180 houses were destroyed by the floods......This was in early October 2009, when flash floods hit southern India.
The disaster affected nearly two million people and claimed hundreds of lives. Ironically, most of the affected districts were drought prone, comparativly poorer, and were not regarded as vulnerable to flooding at such an unexpected scale. People were not prepared, and the region had no infrastructure to provide emergency shelter.
A number of local and International NGOs – coordinated through the Inter Agency Group (IAG), responded by addressing basic survival needs. These organisations provided temporary shelter, food, water treatment provisions, essential Non Food Items (NFI). Oxfam India was one of them.Oxfam India responded by providing relief provisions to 13,000 households in two of the worst affected districts, Bagalkot in Karnataka and Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh.