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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  Cyclone Phailin hits land near Gopalpur in Odisha
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Cyclone Phailin hits land near Gopalpur in Odisha

IMD says ‘very heavy’ rainfall will continue in coastal Odisha and Andhra Pradesh in the next 24 hours

The map shows the areas affected by tropical storm strength winds (green), 58mph winds (orange) and cyclone wind strengths (red). Source: JRC/Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (JRC/Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System )Premium
The map shows the areas affected by tropical storm strength winds (green), 58mph winds (orange) and cyclone wind strengths (red). Source: JRC/Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System
(JRC/Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System )

New Delhi: Cyclone Phailin reached the Odisha coast on Saturday evening, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands and disrupting rail and air services in the state and in Andhra Pradesh, with some agencies warning that it could be one of the worst storms to hit India.

The cyclone was in the process of crossing the coast near Gopalpur in Ganjam district in Odisha with a sustained wind velocity of around 200km per hour, India Meteorological Department (IMD) director general L.S. Rathore said in a press conference late Saturday evening. Wind intensity was expected to increase to 210km per hour for the next one hour while it crossed the coast. Private weather forecaster Skymetweather.com earlier said Cyclone Phailin had made landfall in Gopalpur around 8pm.

Rathore added that Phailin is not a super cyclone as it did not have a sustained wind speed of over 220km per hour. Phailin is likely to remain “very severe" for the six hours after landfall, after which it will remain a “cyclonic storm" for another six hours. He added that “very heavy" rainfall will continue in coastal Odisha and Andhra Pradesh in the next 24 hours.

Apart from Ganjam, three other districts in Odisha—Puri, Khurda and Jagatsinghpur—have been hit by the cyclone. Srikakulam district in adjoining Andhra Pradesh state has also been badly affected.

At least five people were killed in Odisha as heavy rains and winds lashed the state, said Odisha revenue and disaster management minister S.N. Patra. Union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said 18 helicopters, 12 aircraft and two warships have been kept on standby by the government for rescue and relief operations in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.

Shinde said 550,000 people in Odisha and 100,000 people in Andhra Pradesh were evacuated to safety, mostly in 500 cyclone shelters. “Some people have showed resistance (against evacuation). Forces have been alerting them. Police have been trying to evacuate them," he said.

“It’s raining since morning, but the intensity of the rain has gone up significantly since 5pm... Wind speed is increasing and the branches of trees have started breaking...," said Preeti Behera, a resident of Khurda district in Odisha. Khurda district is expected to be the worst-hit by the cyclone.

“There has been no electricity since afternoon and it has impacted the water supply. The main markets of the capital city have also shut down in fear of the cyclone," said Smarajit Nayak, a resident of Bhubaneswar. “Despite promises from the state government, essential food items are not available in plenty. 10 biscuit packets care costing three times (as much) and most of the vegetables including potatoes are priced in excess of 50 per kg," Nayak added.

The IMD earlier said that it is not underestimating the severity of the cyclonic storm and maintained that it was a “very severe" one. Director general Rathore said in an earlier press conference that international weather monitoring agencies that had been giving forecasts different from what the IMD had been saying have now “scaled down" their estimates of the severity of the storm.

Category-5 Katrina, which devastated the US East coast in 2005, qualifies as the most severe grade given to a cyclone.

M.R. Ramesh Kumar, chief scientist (physical oceanography) at the National institute of Oceanography in Goa, said this cyclone has all the characteristics of the cyclone that hit Odisha in 1999, killing more than 15,000 people. “It is like a super cyclone," he said.

Disaster management authorities are of the opinion that Cyclone Phailin could be one of the worst to hit India.

“This could be the second biggest cyclone to hit coastal India (after 1999), but our priority is to minimize loss of life as we are better prepared due to the early warning system, as opposed to the severe storms faced by the country earlier," said Shashidhar Reddy, vice-chairman, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), at a press conference in New Delhi.

Reddy said the biggest evacuation due to a cyclone in India took place during the 1990 Andhra Pradesh cyclone, when 650,000 people had been evacuated from coastal areas.

The Andhra Pradesh government said it evacuated nearly 64,000 people from the low-lying areas of Srikakulam, Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam districts. The NDMA said that 30 people were stranded at a particular location in Srikakulam district and that National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel were in the process of rescuing them.

“The state government has took all preventive actions, to avoid loss of human life," chief minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy told reporters after a review meet with state officials. The chief minister said he directed all the concerned ministers and officials to rush to the affected districts to oversee arrangements. Out of 22,994 fishing boats, 22 are yet to return to port, Reddy said.

Heavy rains lashed Srikakulam district, which borders Ganjam district of Odisha. The sea had already pushed inland as much as 40m in parts of Srikakulam and Vizianagaram districts because of the cyclone, said N. Raghuveera Reddy, revenue minister of Andhra Pradesh, who was overseeing rescue arrangements from Visakhapatnam.

Union cabinet secretary Ajit Kumar Seth chaired a meeting of the Crisis Management Group, and has reviewed preparedness of the cyclone, a government release said.

Flights to Bhubaneswar and Visakhatpatnam have been hit. Bhubaneswar airport has been closed, with operations being allowed for only Indian Air Force flights. Six IndiGo flights, four Jet Airways flights and two Spicejet flights have been cancelled. As a precautionary measure, 183 trains have been cancelled while 22 trains have been curtailed and 26 trains have been diverted so far.

The government has also drawn up contingency plans to cope with the cyclone’s effects on India’s electricity grid, said top officials.

“Primarily the distribution and sub-transmission infrastructure gets affected which results in reduced load. Unless, God is against us, we don’t expect any damage to the grid. All our links are online and not one has been disturbed yet due to the cyclone," said state-owned Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd (PGCIL) chairman and managing director R.N. Nayak at 4pm on Saturday.

Load management functions are overseen by PGCIL and carried out by its subsidiary Power System Operation Corp. Ltd (Posoco). Regional load despatch centres are responsible for maintaining grid discipline and supervising optimum scheduling and delivery of electricity in their regions, and function under Posoco.

“All our employees are on duty across the country. We are working out all contingency measures. The demand in Odisha has come down from the average of around 3,000 megawatts (MW) to 1,400MW due to the distribution network being switched off in the coastal areas. Hence, the demand has come down. We are waiting for the cyclone to reach the land to gauge its impact," said a top official at Posoco requesting anonymity.

Utpal Bhaskar, Ragini Verma, Prashant K. Nanda and Tarun Shukla in New Delhi and Yogendra Kalavalapalli in Hyderabad contributed to this story.

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Published: 12 Oct 2013, 02:24 PM IST
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