Ten things before the flood season

• Raise or cover the tube-well mouth; keep oral saline and water-purifying tablets at home.
• A week of dry food (flattened rice, molasses, biscuits) on a high shelf.
• Medicines, especially for diabetes and blood pressure, for fifteen days.
• Papers and cash wrapped in plastic at the highest point of the house.
• Decide now where a boat or a raft will come from.
• Snakes: no walking at night without a torch; if bitten, no tourniquet, no charms, straight to hospital.
• Touch no power line that is in the water; switch off the meter.
• Straw and high ground for the animals.
• Name who will look after the elderly neighbour who lives alone.
• Save the shelter's and the union council's numbers; when the water comes, post a Need on this site.

After the water falls: treat wells and tube-wells with bleaching powder, do not sleep in the house before the walls dry, keep children out of the water.