J&K floods: Buoyant household items save many from drowning

Buoyant household items save many from drowning in floods

Srinagar: Thermocol flooring, inflatable swimming pool and bed and water storage tanks were used by the people in the flooded city to prevent themselves and others from drowning.

Call it innovation or "jugaad" residents of various localities of the city used any object that could float, to save themselves.

Flood affected areas

Using an empty water storage tank as a floating device, Ghulam Qadir Lone, a resident of Bemina locality, not only saved his family from drowning but also members of seven other families.

"As the water level was rising and my double-storey house was about to submerge, I knew that I had to act to save our lives. So I decided to empty the water tank, plug its hole and use it as a floating device," Lone told PTI. He said that after saving his family, he returned to the locality and saved 26 members of seven other families.

While the empty water tankers came handy to some, many people used thermocol floorings to prevent themselves from drowning as the flood water levels rose in their areas.

Almost every household in Kashmir uses thermocol floorings to escape the severe cold in the winter season, "We never knew that a simple sheet of thermocol that we use to keep floors of our houses warm in winters would act as life saver for us," said Shabir Ahmed, a resident of Jawahar Nagar locality.

Ahmed said that he used the bundle of thermocol to save his family members from the devastating flood, in which his three-storey house was submerged. Some people used inflatable beds and swimming pools to keep afloat in the flooded waters.

"We tried our best to find anything in the house that could float, then we realized that we had the inflatable swimming pool. We managed to inflate it and used it to save our lives," said Dr Bashir Ahmed, a resident of Raj Bagh locality.

To save lives of many people who were stranded in their houses after the floods, many volunteers used household items to save the lives of others.

"I used the inflatable bed in my house to save people in my locality and it was much before the help from the army and other agencies arrived," said Swaran Singh, a resident of Jawahar Nagar locality.