Phailin leaves trail of destruction, but evacuations limit deaths to 20
Monday, 14/10/2013
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BHUBANESWAR/GOPALPUR: Cyclone Phailin left a trail of destruction in Odisha, knocking out lakhs of homes affecting nine million people and wrecking the vital Gopalpur and Paradip ports but mass evacuation saved thousands of lives.
AFP A coconut-seller sits before his destroyed shop in Gopalpur.
Casualties were minimised in both Odisha and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh after 900,000 people were taken to safety and housed in government buildings and temples in the country’s biggest ever evacuation.
India’s worst cyclone in 14 years was ebbing on Sunday after making landfall in Odisha’s beach town of Gopalpur at 9.30pm on Saturday. The cyclone, which remained in the “very severe category” — wind speeds of 210-220 km an hour —in Odisha until 2.30pm Sunday, snapped communication system and power supply and uprooted trees across the districts.
But by evening it had weakened into “deep depression”, with the wind speed of 45-55 kmph, said the meteorology department.
Phailin (pronounced peelin) affected 145,110 villages in 12 coastal districts of Odisha, where 20 deaths were reported. Most of the victims were crushed under falling trees. The government, however, confirmed only 16 deaths.
A preliminary report by the state government said the cyclone ravaged 2.34 lakh mud houses and damaged crop in five lakh hectares. Most of the deaths and destruction were caused in Ganjam district.
As the cyclone moved into the interior, rain triggered flooding in some major rivers.
“The state government is taking all possible steps to provide relief to persons affected in yesterday’s cyclone,” Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik said on Sunday. The all-weather Gopalpur port has suffered losses of ` 200 crore and building it back would cost “four times as much,” port director MM Moharana said.
It is a stunning blow — not just to business but also the livelihood of the locals.
The port employees around 5,000 people. Some 300 km away, at the Paradip port officials are yet to assess the extent of damage but the main building has been damaged.
Personnel of Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force and National Disaster Response Action Force managed to clear some road but many rural areas were still inaccessible, said a government official.
T he power supply was brought on in most affected areas after 27 hour, except in Ganjam. In Andhra Pradesh’s Srikakulam, most of the 65,000 people who were moved to safer places had returned home by Sunday evening.
Though damage inflicted by Phailin was extensive it was limited to fields, electricity lines and transformers. There was minor damage to roads and some houses.
