At the kindergarten of SOS Children's Village Rourkela - Photo: D. Sansoni
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In October 1999 a cyclone brought a trail of destruction through eight Indian coastal provinces. Worst hit was the Orissa region, south west of Kalkutta, which saw winds with top speeds of 300km/h and flood waves up to 15 metres high. According to official figures, 15 million people were directly affected and along the east coast of India around 5 million homes destroyed. 8,000 were killed and whole fishing villages were washed away by the mass of water.
SOS Children's Villages immediately instigated an emergency relief programme which provided the first phase of medical assistance to those crises areas left vulnerable to the spread of disease. Up to January 2000, SOS Children's Villages India had been providing both long term and temporary accommodation to 190 children from those parts of Orissa devastated by the storm.
Despite intensive efforts to integrate the children into new families, most of them remained in the care of SOS Children's Villages; it was possible for the majority either to be accommodated provisionally in families in SOS Children's Village Bhubaneshwar or to live with their SOS mothers for two years in four flats not far from their new homes.