BackCyclone Phailin and a tale of three tragedies
What was the difference between Odisha in 1999 and Odisha in 2013? Or between Uttarakhand in 2013 and Odisha in 2013?
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New Delhi: Ahead of Cyclone Phailin’s landfall last Saturday, the entire nation and most of the world braced for the worst. Odisha, which was to bear the brunt of the cyclone, classified Grade 5, is not just topographically vulnerable to such natural disasters but has a miserable record in dealing with calamities—as was demonstrated in 1999, when a super cyclone left 15,000 people dead in the state.
Worse, the horrible tragedy that befell mountainous Uttarakhand was fresh in everyone’s mind. In June, flash floods and landslides, caused by extreme rainfall, devastated the state—580 died, according to government records, but 5,359 people (938 locals and 4,421 pilgrims) are still officially “missing".
Fortunately, everyone’s fears were belied. The day after Phailin, it emerged that an estimated 21 people lost their lives.
Yes, there was massive collateral damage—destruction of houses, crops and infrastructure—but the fatalities were minimized.
So, what was the difference between Odisha in 1999 and Odisha in 2013? Or between Uttarakhand in 2013 and Odisha in 2013?
And are there any learnings from this?
After all, such jousts with nature are going to recur more frequently. An analysis of extreme weather conditions—caused by cyclones, heavy rainfall, drought and heat wave—hosted on the National Disaster Management Authority website reveals that instances of extreme weather events accelerated dramatically in the previous three decades. The average annual number of extreme weather events more than doubled from 140.8 in 1980-89 to 350.4 in 2000-10.
As for why 1999 wasn’t repeated in 2013, even a cursory survey of the information available in the public domain provides pointers on how the country’s weather agencies now have access to alternative and sophisticated sources of information that were not available earlier.
Observations on weather now flow from land stations, ships, buoys, aircraft and satellites (which alone account for 20 million reports a day). The volume of such data flow has increased in the past few years, coinciding with the launch of a range of satellites and weather sensors. Meanwhile, growing sophistication in data crunching and analysis has resulted in a reduction in forecasting errors—a trend that has accelerated in the past five years.
The delivery of these forecasts, including warnings, have also undergone a process of disintermediation—unlike in the past, users can now directly access the information. At the same time, the growth of electronic media has ensured that warnings are sufficiently amplified in advance.
All of these were in evidence in the recent episode involving Cyclone Phailin. The cyclone was tracked from the time it was formed in the Gulf of Thailand to the time it made landfall around 9pm last Saturday. Forewarned about the cyclone, the authorities evacuated, in some cases forcibly, people residing along the coast—various estimates, all of them above half a million, have been provided. All these helped minimize the human toll.
It is also becoming clear that haphazard urbanization has increased the risks of fatalities during such extreme weather conditions. If the Odisha experience has to be the norm, the country has to reboot its present approach to development. That’s an uphill task, but just as in the case of Phailin, we’ve been forewarned.
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