As climate change intensifies the threat of cyclones, floods and extreme weather in Odisha, India, disabled people face disproportionate risks during emergencies. While the state has developed extensive disaster preparedness measures, concerns remain around accessibility, communication, evacuation, rescue and recovery.
In this article, written by Jason Strother, the experiences of disabled people affected by Cyclone Fani are explored alongside the perspectives of disability advocates working to make emergency planning more inclusive. It examines Odisha’s disaster response system and the need for disabled people to have a greater role in shaping how communities prepare for and recover from extreme weather.
Around a dozen young men in high-visibility vests stood in formation outside a multi-story storm shelter. Suddenly, the blare of a siren from atop the structure sent them running down a pathway toward an adjacent village.
As they fanned out among the small houses, two men carrying a stretcher went in one direction, while another team arrived at the home of Purna Chandra Jena and assisted the 93-year-old into a wheelchair before bringing him back to the evacuation center.
Jena had agreed to participate in this practice rescue. He explained that because he has limited mobility, hearing, and vision, he doesn’t think he’d be able to stay safe on his own during a real emergency.
“If I’m still alive the next time there’s an actual storm, I feel confident that these youngsters will save me,” he said.
Prioritized evacuations
Each year on June 19, communities across Odisha, a state in eastern India that borders the Bay of Bengal, hold emergency preparedness exercises. The region is frequently battered by hurricane-strength storms, known as cyclones throughout South Asia.
Volunteers here are trained to serve as first responders, explained Tuna Maharana, whose local nongovernmental organization, Kamdhenu Sabha Samiti, works with authorities in the Ganjam District to teach best practices. That includes identifying residents who might need extra help reaching safety first.
“We want to ensure that our most vulnerable residents, like pregnant women, the elderly, and people with a disability, feel safe in our cyclone and flood shelters,” Maharana said, noting that many of these facilities now have accessible ramps and restrooms.
Odisha is widely regarded as having India’s most comprehensive disaster planning system. These measures, which officials refer to as a “zero casualty” model, include early warning alerts, a network of several hundred evacuation shelters, as well as community-level awareness and training campaigns.
Disabled people get impacted the most
But despite these provisions, increasingly extreme weather could put the state’s emergency preparations to the test. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as the waters of the northern Indian Ocean warm, the region will experience more floods, heat waves, and stronger cyclones.
Some observers point out that while these conditions put the lives of all people at risk, these threats are not experienced equally across all groups. “Climate change is impacting all of us now, everyone,” said advocate Sruti Mohapatra, who advises on disability-inclusive disaster planning. “People with disabilities get impacted the most.”
People with a disability face “disproportionate risks and barriers during disasters,” according to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. The agency reports this leads to higher rates of morbidity and mortality among this community. These dangers can start ahead of an approaching storm; individuals are more likely to be left behind, accidentally or not, by loved ones and caregivers.
In light of these threats caused by more severe weather, there’s growing concern that authorities across the globe aren’t ready to fully safeguard the lives of all of their residents, including in Odisha.
The Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA), the government agency in charge of emergency policy, did not respond to requests to comment for this report.
Accessibility is more than “a toilet”
Mohapatra, who leads the rights group Swabhiman and is based in Odisha’s capital city, Bhubaneswar, says while she’s proud of the OSDMA’s “exemplary” efforts to save lives during severe weather events, more needs to be done to protect “marginalized populations” beyond prioritized evacuations. “When you are talking about the rescue and bringing people to safer places, are we talking about accessibility?” she said. “Because accessibility is not just about a room or an accessible toilet. It’s much broader than that.”
A more disability-conscious strategy, she explains, would recognize that people with a disability are not a homogenous group and often have varying needs to ensure their safety in an emergency situation. For example, she points out, volunteer responders might not receive the proper training to assist people with specific types of conditions. That could wind up doing more harm than good. “It is very important for the village teams to know where to touch, when not to touch,” Mohapatra said. “Consider me, I’m a person with a spinal cord injury. My body goes into spasms if you don’t touch me in the right place.”
During an evacuation, residents can spend days or many weeks in a shelter. Officials at these facilities aren’t always aware of who has a disability or how best to speak with them, explained Bijay Kumar Parida, founder of the Odisha Association of the Deaf. “People can see who has a mobility impairment or who is blind, but not someone who is deaf or who cannot speak,” Parida, who communicated through an Indian Sign Language interpreter, said. “No one can explain to us where to go, what to do, or when meals are ready.”
Another concern is that people whose assistive devices are lost or damaged during a disaster will go without replacements for long periods, delaying how quickly they can resume their normal lives.
Cyclone Fani
On the morning of May 3, 2019, Pudi Janaki Reddy awoke to warnings that Cyclone Fani, a storm with wind speeds that reached around 180 km per hour, was expected to make landfall where she lives in the coastal city of Puri. She climbed into her motorized three-wheel scooter that she calls a tricycle and headed through the narrow alleys of her neighborhood to the nearest shelter inside a school, but was unable to bring her vehicle into the small building.
That was the last she saw of it. “As a man was helping me inside, the wind blew away my tricycle and it was totally damaged,” said the 48-year-old, who earns a living cooking and selling chicken along the roadside. Without it, Reddy was dependent on government rations and help from her neighbors. “I was unable to work for three months. If someone asked me for something, all I could do was crawl around,” she said. After seeking help from a local disability support group to assist with paperwork, Reddy was able to secure a new scooter from the authorities.
For Pratima Kar, Cyclone Fani’s impact was longer lasting. She recalls how on the day of the storm, she looked out her kitchen window to see her young son standing near a coconut tree that was bending in the wind. “I ran outside to save him, but the tree fell on me,” she said. “It broke my left arm and leg, and caused paralysis on that side of my body.”
Kar, 44, says for years, she needed to use a walker and rarely left her home, which is located in a village in the Puri district. While adjusting to her new mobility needs was challenging, Kar suggests that the storm also took a toll on her mental health. “I just worried about how my condition would affect my kids,” she said. “I kept asking myself why I survived.” “Sometimes I felt like I lost my mind,” Kar added.
The “real experts”
The OSDMA has reportedly gone through restructuring that local media say will enable it to respond more thoroughly to climate change-driven emergencies and conditions. But to what extent these plans will be inclusive of the needs of the state’s disabled community is unclear.
Odisha-based advocate Jitendra Kumar Biswal explained that policy often fails these individuals because emergency measures have traditionally been created by the non-disabled. “I have always believed unless you yourself experienced disability you can’t have that specific perspective,” said Biswal, who has called for the creation of an advisory unit at the OSDMA comprised of disabled residents.
He says while authorities have made progress by making shelters more accessible and stockpiling mobility devices like wheelchairs and calipers, there’s still a lack of understanding on how best to assist disabled disaster survivors in the recovery phase.
“Disability Cells”
This is where the input of a specialized “disability cell” could be crucial, Biswal explained. “They could give you better advice on the ground. They can have a better sense of the problem that people with a disability might be facing,” he said.
In 2019, the OSDMA announced plans to create a disability-focused group, but according to Biswal, this has yet to materialize. “An issue like climate change requires the expertise of the local people,” advocate Sruti Mohapatra said. But people with a disability are “assumed to not understand the issues.” This prejudiced notion couldn’t be further from the truth, she explained.
“They know what is happening in their area, they best know how to adapt, how to be rescued, where (are) the relief centers, the cyclone shelters, the flood shelters,” Mohapatra said. “They are real experts.”
Reporting for this article was supported by the Fulbright South and Central Asia Regional Research Program.
Debashis Maharana contributed to this story.
This article was written by Jason Strother and first published on the Global Disability News Network.
The Global Disability News Network is a collaborative, community-driven and fully accessible multimedia platform sharing authentic disability stories and news from around the world, created by disabled people and their allies to amplify diverse voices and drive disability justice. Read more at globaldisabilitynews.org.