Homes submerged in Delhi floods — What people saved, and what they left behind

A teary-eyed, wistful Priyanka wanted to get hold of just a few of her belongings. A necklace, she said, was one of them, gifted by her friends on her birthday. What was left with her were her schoolbag and textbooks, as it was when she returned from school on July 12 to see that her home in Jaitpur’s Vishwakarma colony was in knee-deep water.

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“At least I have my schoolbag, and all my books are intact since I came straight from school...,” she said at a flood relief centre set up in a government school. Her friend, Gauri, who lives in a nearby colony, keeps coming to visit her and her family. “I wanted to give her company so that she doesn’t feel lonely,” said the teenager.

For Guddo, 40, who lives nearby, they would have nothing had her son not retrieved a charpoy from their flooded home. “My son thought I might not have a place to rest. He was worried because I have knee pain...,” she said while sitting on the charpoy that occupies a corner of the corridor at the second floor of the government relief centre.

Both families, however, could not retrieve important documents in time. “By now, everything in my house along with documents would have perished,” said Guddo.

As waters entered homes and neighbourhoods suddenly on Thursday night, people were left with little time to escape, forcing many to leave behind valuables and important papers, such as identity and financial documents.

Some 30km away from the camp where Guddo and Gauri were whole up, people in Yamuna Khadar of Mayur Vihar, where too floodwaters inundated settlements, people spoke of similar plight.

Dev, a lawyer and a volunteer who has grown up in the area, has been trying to save whatever he can from the local school. Khushiyal Kumar, a vegetable farmer, ventured back home with a private diver, swimming around two kilometres, only to get a trunk filled with some documents, clothes and a Solar panel.

Many of those in the shelters said they were not given adequate warning. “In 2010, there was a similar flood but we were given an alert a few hours in advance. Police officers were making announcements on mics and there were announcements made from the mosque and temple,” says Sangeeta Devi at the Mayur Vihar camp. With only her purse and her phone, she left home.

“If we had even half an hour, we could have saved our belongings. We had invested so much in the house... a fridge, beds, a TV. Everything is gone now. Someone might go in and rob the house... or they might just float away,” she said.

An official of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) said that they had given people ample time to leave and most were reluctant for fear of theft in their home.

Dev, who claimed to have rescued over 600 people over the last few days, said he and his accomplices had “managed to save some of the study material, books and teaching aids that were kept in trunks and a couple of black boards...” “It’s difficult to get all the chairs and tables out of the water, but even these have taken years to put together. All of it will most likely get destroyed in water...,” he said.

“We had a very difficult childhood in my area and I am the only one around my age who managed to study so much. When I was a child we had to walk over four kilometres to the nearest school. Now everyone here knows and respects me and comes to me with their problems. I have realised how important it is to study.”

Thinking about the almirah, and her bed that are probably ruined, Bibi Mariam, 60, a resident of Jaipur, said, “I left in such a hurry that all I could save was my purse which had a few hundred rupees and her Aadhar card.” On Friday, as she stood in line as an NGO set up camp, she said, “They are asking people who lost their homes, to register. We will be given food after we have given our details. That’s why I got my Aadhaar, because I might need it any time.”

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At a private relief camp near Signature Bridge, Chanda Ram, who migrated from Hyderabad in Pakistan to Delhi in 2019, said that he could only think about saving items from his mobile covers stall.

“My jhuggi was suddenly filled with a lot of water. I could not carry a lot of things so I just picked up items from my phone cover stall as I need to survive so that I can sustain a household of six people.”