Evacuations keep death toll down

Authorities in India, Bangladesh managed to evacuate over three million people

Rescue teams searched for survivors in eastern India and Bangladesh yesterday, a day after the most powerful cyclone in over a decade devastated coastal villages, tore down power lines, and left large tracts of land under water.

The full extent of the casualties and damage to property inflicted by Cyclone Amphan would only be known once communications were restored, officials said.

While at least 85 people died in the Indian state of West Bengal

and neighbouring Bangladesh, mass evacuations organised by authorities undoubtedly saved countless lives.

‘End of the world’

“I have never seen such a cyclone in my life. It seemed like the end of the world. All I could do was to pray... Almighty Allah saved us,” Azgar Ali, 49, a resident of Satkhira district on the Bangladesh coast said.

Authorities in both countries managed to evacuate more than three million people, moving them to storm shelters before Amphan struck. But the evacuation effort was focused on communities that lay directly in the cyclone’s path, leaving villages on the flanks still vulnerable.

Television images showed upturned boats on the shore, people wading through kneedeep water and buses crashed into each other. The airport in Kolkata, West Bengal’s state capital, lay under water and several neighbourhoods in the city of 14 million people have had no electricity since the storm struck, according to residents.

Pradip Kumar Dalui, an official in the state’s South 24 Parganas area, said that storm waters breached river embankments in several places, flooding over half a dozen villages, that were home for more than 100,000 people.

“Many mud houses have been destroyed because of the wind or fallen trees,” Dalui told Reuters by telephone. Electricity lines and phone connections were down in many places, but so far no deaths had been reported in this area, he said.