More than 1 million evacuated as Cyclone Fani hits Indian coast
● Officials report two dead to date ● Weather affects Mount Everest
Cyclone Fani has torn through India’s eastern coast as a grade five storm, lashing beaches with rain and winds gusting up to 127 miles per hour and affecting weather as far away as Mount Everest as it approached the former imperial capital of Kolkata.
The India Meteorological Department said the “extremely severe” cyclone in the Bay of Bengal yesterday hit the coastal state of Odisha around 8am ( 2am GMT), with weather impacted across the Asian subcontinent.
Dust storms were forecast in the desert state of Rajasthan bordering Pakistan, heat waves in the coastal state of Maharashtra on the Arabian Sea, heavy rain in the northeastern states bordering China and snowfall in the Himalayas.
Around 1.2 million people were evacuated from lowlying areas of Odisha and moved to nearly 4,000 shelters, according to India’ s National Disaster Response Force.
A state official said as of last night two people had been killed.
Indian officials put the navy, air force, army and coastguard on high alert. Odisha Special Relief Commissioner Bishnupada Sethi said the evacuation effort was unprecedented in India.
By yesterday afternoon, Fani had weakened to a “very severe” storm as it hovered over coastal Odisha and was forecast to move north- northeast toward the Indian state of West Bengal by the evening.
In Bhubaneswar, a city in Odisha famous for an 11thcentury Hindu temple, palm trees whipped back and forth like mops across skies made opaque by gusts of rain.
Tanmay Das, a 40- year- old resident, said it was a “very, very scary feeling ”.“The sound of wind [ is] as if it will blow you away,” he said.
Most of the area’s thatchedroof houses were destroyed and there was no electricity.
The national highway to Puri – a popular tourist beach city with other significant Hindu antiquities – was littered with f allen trees and electricit y poles, making it impassable. A special train ran Thursday to evacuate tourists from the city.
The airport in Kolkata – the capital of West Bengal – closed from 3pm ( 9am GMT) to this morning and rail lines were shut. At least 200 trains were cancelled across India.
The storm hit in the middle of India’s six- week general election, with rain forecast in Kolkata forcing political parties to cancel campaign events.
The National Disaster Response Force dispatched 54 rescue and relief teams of doctors, engineers and deepsea divers to flood- prone areas along the coast and as far afield as Andaman and Nicobar Islands – a group of islands that comprise a union territory about 840 miles east of mainland India in the Bay of Bengal.
Up to four inches of rain was expected in much of Sri Lanka. More than 1,430 miles away on Mount Everest, some mountaineers and Sherpa guides were descending to lower camps as weather worsened at higher elevations. The government issued a warning that heavy snowfall was expected in the higher mountain areas with rain and storms lower down.
Trekking agencies were asked to take tourists to safety.
Hundreds of climbers, their guides, cooks and porters huddled at the Everest base camp, according toP emba Sherpa of Xtreme Climbers Trek, who said weather and visibility was poor. May is the best month to climb the 8,848m Everest when Nepal experiences a few windows of good weather to scale the peak.
On India’s cyclone scale, Fani – which means snake – is the second- most severe, equivalent to a category three hurricane.
Some of the deadliest tropical cyclones on record have occurred in the Bay of Bengal. A 1999 “super” cyclone killed around 10,000 people and devastated large parts of Odisha.