Mass evacuations have spared India the widespread deaths many had feared from a powerful cyclone that roared ashore over the weekend, officials have said.
The country is beginning to sort through the wreckage of flooded towns, tangled power lines and tens of thousands of destroyed thatch homes in the wake of Cyclone Phailin, the strongest storm to hit India in more than a decade.
The cyclone destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of crops, but more than 20 hours after it made landfall in Orissa state on the country’s east coast, authorities said they knew of only 17 fatalities.
The death toll is expected to climb as officials reach areas of the cyclone-battered coast that remain isolated by downed communication links and blocked roads, but the evacuation of nearly one million people appeared to have saved many lives.
“Damage to property is extensive,” said Amitabh Thakur, the top police officer in the Orissa district worst-hit by the cyclone, “but few lives have been lost.”
Nearly one million people were evacuated from the coast ahead of Phailin, including more than 870,000 in Orissa and more than 100,000 in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.
On the highway to the seaside city of Gopalpur, where the storm made landfall early on Saturday night, two tractor-trailers with shattered windshields were lying on their sides, while a hotel nearby was in tatters, with tables and chairs strewn about.
Country is beginning to sort through wreckage
“We were terrified,” A-1 Hotel owner Mihar Ranjan said of himself and 14 other people who had been huddling inside when the wind ripped the tin roof off the building.
Yesterday, Gopalpur’s power lines sagged nearly to the ground and a strong surf churned off the coast. But some shops were open, doing brisk business selling bottled drinks and snacks, and locals expressed relief that the damage was not worse.
A mermaid statue remained standing on Gopalpur’s pier, where most decorative street lamps still stood along with most of the city’s buildings.
“Everyone feels very lucky,” said Prabhati Das, a 40-year-old woman who came from the town of Behrampur, about seven miles inland, to see the aftermath at the coast. A cargo ship carrying iron ore, the MV Bingo, sank on Saturday as the cyclone barrelled through the Bay of Bengal, and its crew of 18 – including 17 Chinese and one Indonesian – went missing for a day, coast guard officials said.
They were being rescued yesterday after their lifeboat was found about 115 miles off the Indian coast, coast guard commandant Sharad Matri said.
Phailin weakened signif-icantly after making landfall as a Category four storm, with sustained winds of up to 131 miles per hour, according to Indian meteorologists.
Those numbers were slightly lower than the last advisory issued by the US Navy’s Hawaii-based Joint Typhoon Warning Center, which reported maximum sustained winds of about 138 mph and gusts up to 167 mph four hours before the storm hit land.
Yesterday, some areas reported breezy drizzles, with winds in some areas blowing at 100 mph. Meteorologists warned that Orissa and other states in the storm’s path would face heavy rains, strong winds and rough seas for several more hours.