Buses, taxis crash against each other; grounded planes shake

● Amphan was the fiercest Cyclone to hit West Bengal in the last 100 years.

● In Kolkata, thousands of trees were uprooted, lamp posts unhinged, power supply snapped, and pieces of shattered glass panes littered all over the streets.

Kolkata, May 21: “Never in my life have I seen a cyclone like this in Bengal,” said 95-yearold Ashok Roy, a retired school teacher, visibly shaken by the ferocity of the extremely severe cyclone Amphan that left a trail of destruction in half a dozen districts.

Buses and taxis crashed against each other, small fishing boats turned turtle and grounded planes shook at the inundated Kolkata airport as winds of up to

190 kmph rampaged through West Bengal, already reeling under the coronavirus outbreak and the lockdown caused by it.

On Thursday morning,

45-year-old Jamal Mondal along with his four daughters and wife was jostling outside a relief camp in South 24 Parganas district’s Gosaba for two loaves of bread and a tarpaulin sheet to spend the nights at a cyclone shelter.

The guest worker had returned home from Bengaluru on Monday. But that relief was short-lived. His onestorey mud house was washed away by Amphan on Wednesday night.

“On Monday, when I reached home, I thought my sufferings were over. But I was wrong. The lockdown took away my job and the cyclone took away everything that was left. I do not know what would I do next, where would I stay and how would I feed my family,” Mondal told a TV news channel.

Half a dozen districts, including large parts of Kolkata, wore a battered look as lakhs of people were homeless and lowlying areas swamped by the cyclone that slammed the Digha coast of West Bengal at

2.30 pm on Wednesday, triggering heavy rainfall in various parts of the state.

Amphan was the fiercest Cyclone to hit West Bengal in the last

100 years.

A large part of the state was without power as electricity poles have been blown away. Mobile and internet services were also down as the cyclone has damaged hundreds of communication towers.

According to officials, more than 1,500 mobile towers across the state have been destroyed.

In Kolkata, thousands of trees were uprooted, lamp posts unhinged, power supply snapped, and pieces of shattered glass panes littered all over the streets. Streets and homes in low-lying areas were swamped with rainwater while portions of several dilapidated buildings came crashing down.

“It is not the city where I have grown up... it seems to be a destroyed one. It seems there was a war yesterday... I cannot believe that this is my Kolkata,” said Sudhir Chakraborty, a resident of south Kolkata’s Rashbehari area.

Cargo and evacuation flights services resumed at the Kolkata airport since morning even as a portion of the aircraft hanger was waterlogged. - PTI