As cyclone nears, 4.2mn evacuated in India, B’desh
CYCLONE AMPHAN One of the severest cyclone in decades will make landfall today
nKOLKATA/BHUBANESWAR: Nearly 4.2 million people have been moved to safety in the coastal regions of India and Bangladesh anticipating one of the severest cyclones in decades, Amphan, making landfall somewhere on the border of the two countries on Wednesday, officials said.
On Tuesday, Amphan was still several hundred kilometres out to sea in the Bay of Bengal, packing winds of up to 235 kmph and gusts of 255 kmph. It is, however, expected to lose some steam before the landfall between Digha in West Bengal and Hatiya Islands in Bangladesh.
According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), cyclone Amphan is expected to cause more damage than its predecessors, cyclone Bulbul in November 2019 and cyclone Alia, 11 years ago. “We have shared the data with Bangladesh also as part of regional office of World Meteorological Organisation,” said Sanjib Banerjee, deputy director general of regional meteorological centre in Kolkata.
The cyclone will hit while India and Bangladesh are in various stages lockdown and the cyclone relief centres in both the countries are being used as quarantines for migrant workers returning home. Officials said around 2 million have been evacuated in the coastal districts of West Bengal (1.8 million) and Odisha (2 lakh) and about 2.2 million in Bangladesh.
In both Bengal and Odisha, the government has turned school, colleges and other government office buildings into relief centres. At least three West Bengal coastal districts - East Midnapore, North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas – and four of Odisha - Balasore, Bhadrak, Jagatsinghpur and Kendrapara - are likely to bear the brunt of the cyclone.
“The silver lining is that Covid-19 has not spread in the remote villages of coastal blocks,” said Javed Khan, disaster management minister of Bengal.
Even though South 24 Parganas has registered 97 Covid-19 cases till date, none have been reported from its six coastal blocks, where the evacuation is in progress. In East Midnapore, only one of 52 cases has been reported from its six coastal blocks.
“Nodal officers have been deputed for each shelter and front line workers, such as police, doctors and civil defence personnel are being given PPES”, P Ulaganathan, district magistrate of South 24 Parganas, said.
In Odisha’s Balasore, where there are 121 Covid-19 cases, officials said only those quarantine centres, which have not been occupied, will be used for cyclone relief.
In the state’s Bhadrak district, another low-lying Covid-19 hot spot, district collector Gyana Ranjan Das said arrangements had been made to shift the evacuees to cyclone shelters inside 72 panchayats and 363 schools in the district.
Odisha’s special relief commissioner (SRC) Pradeep Jena admitted that running cyclone relief centres during the pandemic was a challenge and said the situation was “under control” and that the district collectors had been “given a free hand”.
District administrations in the two states have told fishermen not to venture out to sea. NDRF and SDRF have been deployed in Bengal and Odisha’s coastal areas and sandbags are in place to strengthen embankments. Kolkata can see wind speed as high as 130 km per hour, an IMD statement said. The region, including parts of north-east, will witness heavy to very heavy rainfall because of the cyclone till Friday.