Chennai’s good samaritans gear up to lend a helping hand

Sneha Mohandoss of Food Bank – Chennai had put out a post asking volunteers to come forward and help the city. The post said, “We at Foodbank Chennai are ready to welcome the cyclone. Like last year Chennai might be in trouble, but we won’t sit n relax in home. We are planning to give food packets for the fishermen and some more requests are coming in and we will be serving everyone who is in trouble. We need contributors (food) and volunteers (for distribution). Please be part on the social cause and make our humanity proud once again.”

Many Chennaiites have responded. “We have received several calls and around 50 people have come forward to help us distribute the food packets. On Tuesday we are going to the Thiruvanmiyur kuppam beach road to distribute over 1500 food packets. Apart from that, we received a recue call from Velachery and we forwarded it to the officials,” she says. 

Also, social media is flooded with messages with numbers that could be contacted if people are stranded or need their phones and e-wallet accounts to be recharged. Air passengers suffered on Monday as flights bound to Chennai were diverted to other cities. Flights were also made to land at Bengaluru and Coimbatore. 

Popular wedding photograph Amar Ramesh posted, “We were so close to landing and then suddenly the flight takes off mid-air saying they can’t land due to bad weather.” The flight was later taken to Bangalore. Even those travelling out of Chennai too are left in lurch. “Our flight was scheduled on Monday evening but we are uncertain whether our flight will even take off. We have been following the news update closely. Earlier the services were suspended till 6 pm but we are told that the services will be suspended even further,” says Smitha R., a performing artist.