A group of residents of a New Town complex made a two-day trip to the Sunderbans to provide over 200 families with food.

The group from PS Arham reached Raidighi last Saturday afternoon. But a low tide and the setting sun forced them to spend the night on a boat and reach the destination — Sripatinagar village by the Thakuran river in Patharpratima block, South 24-Parganas — early on Sunday.

The aid was facilitated by the forest department. Around 220 packs were distributed. Each pack contained dry ration — rice, dal, sugar, salt, cooking oil, onion, potato biscuits, milk powder — soaps, masks and sanitary napkins.

The kit should last over a week for a family of four, one of the organisers said. Around 300 sets of tarpaulin sheets and clothes were distributed to another set of families.

The grounded embankment across the Thakuran river greeted the visitors on Sunday morning.

Cyclone Amphan has damaged more than 90 per cent of the embankments in the mangrove delta, leading to brackish water flooding the villages.

Flooded farmlands in the Sunderbans

Before coming across hundreds of hungry families, the visitors saw their flattened houses, trees and electric poles that still bore signs of the storm’s fury. “Saline water has damaged the farmlands and entered the freshwater ponds, killing all the fish. Going by past experience from Cyclone Aila (2009), it will take at least a year to remove the saline water. All this when our livelihoods were already choked by the lockdown,”

Nibaran Das, a villager, told the New Town volunteers.

Another resident said “the people were praying every day for strong monsoon showers to remove some of the salinity”.

“Seeing pictures of the devastation on TV is one thing. Seeing in person the losses these people have suffered is a different thing,” said Samudrika Armstead, a member of the team and a teacher at La Martiniere for Boys.