Today is November 23rd, which is always grandly celebrated by devotees as Sathya Sai Baba’s birthday. However this year, Puttaparthi is making news for a different reason: the floods which engulfed the region several days ago have resulted in a deadly disaster zone, and it is causing dire circumstances for thousands of people.

This has directly impacted the functioning of Karuna Society’s small animal clinic (Enumulapalli), Wildlife Sanctuary (Puttaparthi), and Cattle Sanctuary (Rayalavaripalli / Karunapalli). Due to bridge collapses, our cattle herders, field laborers and other employees are unable to get to work. In some cases, job duties have been changed to allow employees to work closer to where they live.

This area in the state of Andhra Pradesh has always been drought-prone, and so efforts were always concentrated on building structures to conserve water. However, due to the incessant rains and storms, now we are holding onto water which is overflowing, resulting in serious flooding!

We are asking for disaster relief support from you, our friends of Karuna, to create a temporary alternate road so our staff can get to work again. We’re working on a temporary detour through fields and using another bridge. Please note: we are creating a temporary re-routing and NOT rebuilding the bridge, which might take several months and will be done by the government.

Due to incessant rains during the last six months, we also need funding to conduct inspections and repairs on existing animal enclosures and walls.