IN the tsunami of December 2004, people heard a strange, deep rumbling before columns of the sea came in. In 2008, the people of north Bihar had no such warning. The river was silent and swift, rising from a deceptive two feet to nearly eight feet in a matter of hours, trapping lakhs of people in remote villages in the districts of Purnea, Madhepura, Araria, Supaul, Saharsa and Kul. Over 800 villages went completely under water and 29 lakh people were displaced from their homes. Another 11 districts in northeast Bihar were partially inundated. Between August 29 and September 1, in the face of one of modern India's worst in the scale of calamities, officials got to work. The odds were stacked against them. Besides the immense logistics of relief, the administration was grappling with the damage its own infrastructure had suffered. Officials had lost their houses, hospitals were flooded, and district magistrates were working out of temporary shelters. With railway lines down and roads motorable only for small stretches, officials were forced to use boats. At the National Disaster Management Authority's office in Delhi, the first reports of the breach in the Kusaha barrage in Nepal, which started the deluge, came in on August 19. K.M. Singh, a former director-general of the Central Industrial Security Force (cisf) and member of the ndma, was surfing the Internet when he read reports of the breach. As alerts flew, the ndma deployed its disaster response force. Though set up after the experience of the tsunami, it is still understaffed. So when the flood waters hit Bihar, it had limited resources. Six lakh people had to be evacuated in 48-72 hours and the ndma could rustle up only 23 motorised boats that were dispatched from Calcutta and Bhubaneshwar. The army then dispatched several columns, each comprising 100 men and 10 to 12 boats. It was only after the first few evacuations that the real exent of the tragedy became apparent. The affected districts had never experienced such immense flooding. So people just hung in. The advice from the elders, which tends to be crucial in the absence of more definitive information from the authorities, was that no one should panic and run. They were certain the water level would soon recede and stabilise at about ankle-depth. This sense of complacency left many villages marooned. Arjun Musahar, a resident of Sukhasan basti, Madanpur block, Madhepura district, was one of the many who refused to pay heed. Within hours he and his family of eight children were trapped. Trapped for a week atop a building, the family finally managed to find place on a boat