Lessons for Odisha in Fani deaths
Although the state did a commendable job by evacuating millions, experts say the toll could have been lower if communication channels were streamlined and residents adhered to safety protocol our mobile or heard any siren,” relief and restoration efforts. said another villager. Those who lost their family
Other villagers said they possimembers would get ₹6 lakh bly could not have gone to the ex-gratia on the basis of post-mormultipurpose cyclone shelter at tem report.
Dharanikuda village, that is 3 km In case of the Nayaks, there away, as it can accommodate no was no way the family could have more than 500 people. been alerted about the exact time
“There are more than 4,000 of the landfall. As the state govpeople in our gram panchayat ernment kept advancing the time and had we all decided to go there, of the cyclone’s landfall from 5.30 there would have been a stampm to 8 am, the Nayaks remained pede,” said Mamata Nayak, oblivious of it.
Payal’s mother. Two days before the cyclone
Government officials, howhit the state, power supply had ever, claimed they sent out been disconnected to the village cyclone alert through text messaof 700 people and mobile connecges besides sounding siren. tivity was almost absent.
“We had sent over 2 crore mesIn Handiali village of the Brahsages to BSNL [state-run telecom magiri, 83-year-old Hadubandhu company] mobile phone consumBaral, who lived in a small asbesers in the coastal Odisha over a tos-roofed two-room house, period of 5 days and sounded reportedly refused to go to his siren for over 50 hours in areas younger son’s pucca house. close to 3 km of the coast. This Soon after the cyclone started never happened before in any of pummelling the village, an acacia the cyclones that hit the state eartree fell on Baral’s house. A brick lier,” said Odisha’s special relief wall collapsed on the elderly commissioner Bishnupada Sethi. man, killing him instantly.
Meanwhile, the death toll has “We did not get any messages increased to 64 even as the state about the timing of the landfall, government has stepped up its but we still knew that the cyclone PURI: Most of the 39 deaths that occurred in Puri district, which took the maximum hit when Cyclone Fani roared through Odisha on May 3, could have been because of lack of proper communication and negligence on the part of the victims, say experts and affected families.
“On May 1 morning when power supply was disconnected, we knew the landfall time to be around 5.30 pm. We thought that we have enough time to shift out,” said Seshadeba Nayak, a resident of village Kuapada in Bramagiri block of Puri district.
Nayak’s 9-year-old daughter Payal, a speech and hearing impaired girl, succumbed to her head injuries she had suffered after a brick wall of their house collapsed on the family on May 3.
When Cyclone Fani actually made landfall in the morning, neither the Nayaks nor any of the villagers of Kuapada knew that the storm was at their doorstep. “None of us got any message on would be catastrophic. I asked my father not to go to his house, but he did not listen,” said his son Gopabandhu Baral, a farmer.
Debabrata Patra of Action Aid India, a non-government organisation, said the pre-cyclone communication system and the evacu a t i o n s y s t e m may h a v e improved vastly from the days of 1999 supercyclone [that killed over 10,000 people], but there are still lots of flaws. “Several people on the coast said they were not intimated about the exact time of landfall. The IMD [India Meteorological Department] also could not estimate correctly the exact place of landfall leading to confusion,” said Patra. In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, chief minister Naveen Patnaik wrote, “I would request you to kindly consider sanctioning five lakh PMAY special houses initially for the state of Odisha.”
(With PTI inputs)