Bengal...

Amphan had been billed as the first super cyclone in the Bay of Bengal since a 1999 storm devastated Odisha, killing around 9,000 people.

“After the 1999 super cyclone, this is the most intense .... Though its wind speed will reduce to 155 to 165 kmph, gusting to 185 kmph, we can expect extensive damage and devastation in South and North 24 Parganas and East Medinipur,” IMD director general M Mohapatra said at a media briefing on Tuesday.

The storm surge is expected to be 4 to 6 metres above the astronomical tide in parts of West Bengal, flooding low lying areas in the three districts when it makes landfall. Wind speeds in Kolkata, Hooghly and Howrah are likely to range between 110 kmph and 120 kmph, gusting to 130 kmph.

Gale-force winds of 75 to 85 kmph, gusting to 95 kmph, are likely to lash the north Odisha coast, including Jagatsignghpur, Bhadrak, Balasore, Kendrapara and other areas.

Meteorologists and climate scientists said that on Monday evening the intensity of Amphan was 145 knots, or 270 kmph. The wind speed passed the 1999 super cyclone velocity of 260 kmph, tweeted meteorologist Eric Holthous, based on data from the Us-based Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

Bay of Bengal recorded sea surface temperature of 32 to 34 degree Celsius prior to the formation of cyclone Amphan, Roxy Mathew Koll, climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said.

“We have never seen such high values until now. Tropical cyclones draw their energy from the ocean surface and these temperatures can supercharge a cyclone, leading to rapid intensification. Cyclone Amphan intensified from a category 1 to a category 5 cyclone in only 18 hours, it evolved into the strongest cyclone ever recoded in Bay of Bengal,” Koll wrote in a social media post on Twitter, sharing sea surface temperature data from the buoys of the National Institute of Ocean Technology.

Sunita Devi, cyclone scientist at IMD, said the wind speed was 130 knots, or about 240 kmph. “Yes, ocean surface temperatures were high. The sea surface temperature was in the range of 30 to 31° Celsius on Monday, as compared to an expected temperature of 28° Celsius over the region,” Devi said.

“On Tuesday, the maximum temperature is around 30° C. The cyclone is still bordering a super cyclone. Its intensity hasn’t reduced much. We are expecting it to make landfall as a very severe cyclonic storm, again bordering an extremely severe cyclonic storm,” Devi added. Amphan was a massive cyclone 700 km in extent and 15 km in height when it was rotating around its centre in the central parts of Bay of Bengal on Monday, Mohapatra had said, adding that its very rapid intensification was unusual.

The cyclone is expected to cause heavy to extremely heavy rainfall over Gangetic West Bengal and heavy to very heavy rainfall over north coastal Odisha. It will also cause heavy to very heavy rainfall over sub-himalayan West Bengal and Sikkim on May 20 and 21 and Assam and Meghalaya on May 21.

IMD is expecting extensive damage to thatched houses, some damage to old, ramshackle concrete structures; uprooting of communication and power poles, disruption of rail/road links at several places, extensive damage to standing crops, plantations and orchards. Large boats may get torn from their moorings.

NDRF has 15 teams in Odisha; 19 in West Bengal and two in reserve for rescue and relief efforts. give more relaxation in terms of opening up businesses and other activities.

Tope said that the restrictions in red zone have not been relaxed as the cases are increasing on a daily basis. “In red zone, we have kept curbs as they were because today’s cases are reported from several containment areas of the red zone. Public transport, Metro, inter-district buses, among others, are still not operational across both categories. The only change in the red zone is that people can now order food for takeaway from restaurants in the red zone,” Tope said in a Facebook Live address.

While the revised guidelines don’t allow malls and shops selling non-essentials to open in red zones, e-commerce activity for essential and non-essential items is allowed. Private offices are not allowed to reopen in red zones and only 5 % of the staff are allowed in government offices.

The state government is currently focused on reviving economic activities in the state that had come to a grinding halt in the past 50 days. Industries and other business activities have been opened in the non-red zone area of the state.

“Industries should begin. And therefore in the non-red zone, we have opened up mostly all industries and other businesses. However, precautions have to be taken; social distancing, masks etc. Bus travel within the district is allowed. Within the non-red zone, private vehicle movement is also allowed, except between 7pm and 7am. Restaurants, shops, workplaces, among others, in non-red zone can remain open,” Tope said. However, public gatherings, religious gatherings are still not allowed in the non-red zone too.

The minister said that barring Mumbai, the health infrastructure to treat Covid-19 patients is up to the mark and there is no shortage of the beds. “Even in Mumbai, the ICU beds currently are equal to existing number of patients. Keeping the potential shortage in mind, we are augmenting the bed availability in the city to 1 lakh beds from the existing capacity of 60,000 with the help of additional facilities at BKC, Worli and Goregaon. The bed capacity in the Dedicated Covid Health Centres (DCHC) in the city will be ramped up to 15,000 and the number of ICU beds will rise to 2,000. We have issued the notification, making it mandatory to the private hospitals to use 80% of their beds for Covid-19 patients at the rates decided by rate control laws,” he said.

Tope said that the state was roping in private medical practitioners to ramp up the availability of the expertise. He said that the committee headed by the chief secretary has been coordinating with private doctors and their organisations for roping in their services ahead of the monsoon.

The minister said that the chief minister Uddhav Thackeray has given them permission to fill up vacant posts in public health, medical education and health departments of the civic bodies and the process will soon begin. “We will recruit the doctors and health workers, including 17,000 in the public health department, in the next couple of months,” he said.

Tope asserted that although the number of patients is on the continuous rise, there was no need to worry as the mortality rate has dropped to 3.2% and the doubling rate has improved to more than 14 days. “The recovery rate, too, has reached 25% as 9,639 patients have been discharged till today after their full recovery. The high rate of addition of the patients is owing to the highest number of tests being conducted in the state. We have a daily capacity of 15,000 tests through 67 laboratories,” he said.

He has also warned people against the ill treatment accorded to patients or the people travelling from the cities like Mumbai and Pune. (Maharashtra), Ahmedabad (Gujarat) and Jammu Tawi (Jammu and Kashmir).

Railways stopped its passenger services in an unprecedented move on March 22 in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak. The 167year-old rail network of India ran nearly 14,000 passenger trains and ferried 23 million passengers a day before the lockdown.

Climate disasters this year, including Cyclone Amphan expected to hit India’s eastern coast on Wednesday, are likely to compound the problems related to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic since 2020 is also likely to be the warmest on record, a paper published on May 15 in British Nature journal has warned.

There is a 74.67% chance of 2020 being the warmest year ever and a 99.94% chance that it will among the top five warmest years, the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in March.

The paper by Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists and students has listed heat waves in north India, floods in the delta regions of West Bengal and Bangladesh, wildfires in Siberia, bushfires in Australia, locust crises, drought, water scarcity and floods in Africa, a hurricane in the US among others as climate-attributable risks. The risks are likely to intersect with the Covid 19 crisis over the next 12 to 18 months.

“A concerning body of evidence already indicates that climate hazards, which are increasing in frequency and intensity under climate change, are likely to intersect with the Covid-19 outbreak and public health response. These compound risks will exacerbate and be exacerbated by the unfolding economic crisis and long-standing socioeconomic and racial disparities, both within countries and across regions,” said the paper.

It warned extreme heat events in the US and outside are likely to lead to excess mortality and morbidity, disrupt power supplies, hospitals and emergency services, especially in cities.

Emergency response agencies and first responders will have to be deployed across multiple crises at the same time. For example, American Federal Emergency Management Agency is coordinating Covid-19 as well as ongoing extreme weather responses.

India’s National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) is faced with similar dual responsibilities. “Cyclone Amphan is intense and has the potential of large-scale damage. It is a big challenge as the cyclone is striking during the outbreak of Covid-19. We [NDRF] are facing two disasters,” NDRF chief SN Pradhan said.

The paper has recommended coordination at every level of government to prevent potential conflicts of strategy across agencies as difficult policy decisions may lie ahead, including whether hospitals, especially intensive care units, can be evacuated safely.

Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said while they were preparing the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, they realised that the worst-case scenarios are the compound climate events, where multiple extreme events overlap. “For example, floods due to extreme rains and the high tide coming together when the sea level is also high .... ,” said Koll. Koll added even developed nations are not well equipped to mitigate such compound events. “Most of the low-to-middle income nations in the tropics do not have early warning systems or long-term policies to adapt and mitigate climate change. Now, on top of that, the Covid-19 pandemic is presenting new hurdles.” Koll said the paper points out that the growing threats of climate crisis cannot be disregarded.