Cyclone Ockhi: Mariner's vigil saves 72 from islands

Thiruvananthapuram: A Facebook video of a young mariner of Poovar who tipped off rescue teams about the possibility of fishermen at an uninhabited island near Lakshadweep has gone viral. The rescue team managed to find around 72 people on December 4 from the island which was familiar to only those who go fishing. The youth identified as Joy of Poovar was featured on groups at Vizhinjam. Three days after losing many relatives to the cyclone, Joy who works with a boat club at Poovar, started contacting boat owners in Tamil Nadu for the whereabouts of a boat named BP Matha that went missing from his village.

He rang up a boat’s co-owner at Thoothoor who said he heard about BP Matha fishing close to a few uninhabited islands before cyclone Ockhi struck.  “He told us that he had heard (on the radio) of this boat being anchored close to Manjappara, an uninhabited area near Lakshadweep,” said Mr Joy. A few islands like Periyappara, Chinnappara and Manjappara are the colloquial name for uninhabited islands in Lakshadweep that comprises 36 islands. He assumed that the boats would have got stranded in the three islands and alerted the  district administration.

“I thank the people at the control room of our district collectorate. They were alert at 1 am and called me to draw an approximate (longitude and latitude). Early in the morning, we received news of 72 people being stranded there though we expected not more than 15 to be saved,” he added. Mr Joy ended the video saying that he shot the video, not for publicity but to send a message that local fishermen should always be allowed during such rescue missions.  “If fishermen were included in Navy and Coast Guard vessels more lives could have been saved,” he added. Revenue officials said that they had received several such calls from local fishermen and had taken their advice into consideration while planning rescue missions.