Unprecedented flood on social media after rain drowns Kerala

However, while most natural disasters are usually met with sharing posters and messages, this time around many youngsters in the city are rising to the occasion, taking proactive measures to help those in need. Apart from contributing to the Kerala CM’s Distress Relief Fund, a number of volunteer groups and NGOs are collecting relief materials and mobilising forces to travel to Kerala for rescue operations. 

Bala Kumaran from You and Us is one of the youngsters risking his own safety, travelling to a few villages in the interior of Kerala, that has remained inaccessible to even the media so far. “When the Chennai floods occurred in 2015, so many people from Kerala came forward to help us here. We have to respond now when they need our assistance. We have spent the last couple of days collecting clothes, sanitary napkins, and some food supplies for the villagers – and have arranged our own transport to reach there. We are coordinating with the authorities to ensure everything goes smooth.”

It’s not just him, Chennai is rife with collection points across town where anything of assistance can be dropped off, with volunteers leaving on a daily basis to different points in Kerala. Other social media networks such as Instagram and Snapchat are also filled with screenshots of numbers to contact and people offering to recharge phones with talktime and data, for those stuck in Kerala.

But it’s not just humans who are in peril, so are the animals. Keeping this in mind, animal activist Shravan Krishnan is coordinating rescue operations for animals across Kerala stuck in the floods, with three members in his team on the way to Idukki.

“We are looking for a few bags of milk power, dog and cat food to distribute there. We are only taking limited relief material because the team’s primary focus is only rescue for now. Dinesh Baba, Nishanth Nichu and Arjun Shan, all these guys are well-trained in animal rescue as well as traversing in disaster-hit areas. Since rains are still pouring and more landslides could happen, the plan is to rescue as many people as possible. Next, once the roads are cleared, we will send vehicles with more relief material in the days to come,” he says.