CHENNAI/TRICHY: While the state has come in for praise for its large-scale preparedness which helped house 82,000 people in government relief centres in a record time of three hours, which minimized the loss of lives, the administration is staring at the enormity of relief work.Preliminary estimates suggest that 18,000 hectares of coconut trees were damaged in Thanjavur alone, besides Dindigul and Nagapattinam districts. The entire coconut farms in Peravurani in Thanjavur and Muthupet in Tiruvarur suffered extensive damage. Banana plantation to a large extent in Pudukottai and Trichy, parts of Thanjavur, mango farms in Nagapattinam and horticultural crop in Kodaikanal in Dindigul were the worst-affected.An aerial view of a damaged coconut grove in Nagapattinam.As the districts tried to pick up the pieces, anger over alleged lapses in making available food and water in the shelters brimmed over in certain localities of Nagapattinam and Tiruvarur districts on Saturday. Local people organised sporadic road blockades in Vedaranyam , Samanthanpettai, Neermulai, Thethakudi and Thiruthuraipoondi much to the inconvenience of transport authorities who were trying to restore bus services.Meanwhile, the cyclone has caused widespread havoc to thousands of farmers across Pudukottai. Farmers lost their horticulture crops that they had been raising for more than 10 years in a matter of a few minutes. These crops had been generating regular income for them. The impact of the cyclone would have its effect on them for at least the next two decades, farmers said. TMC leader G K Vasan said that Gaja had severely hit the farming community, mostly coconut growers. The strong winds had uprooted at least two lakh coconut trees, they said, adding that they had gone 20 years backward.S Kamaraj, a farmer from Avanam Kaikatti, said that there could be roughly 1.5 lakh jack fruit trees in Pudukkottai district mainly in Vadakadu , Maangudi, Keeramangalam and Avanam Kaikatti. Cyclone Gaja has uprooted at least 60% of the trees. “As per rough estimates, over 3 lakh coconut trees were uprooted in the cyclone out of a total 10 lakh trees in the district,” said Dhanapathi.“Farmers in Pudukottai district had adopted horticulture crops to sustain agriculture over the past couple of decades after being hit by successive droughts. They resorted to intercropping by planting jackfruit trees, mango trees, teak and red sanders between the coconut trees, he said.

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