Odisha is battered by cyclonic storms every year with some intense enough to damage crops, plantations, trees, mud houses and communication and electric poles, as well as disrupt road traffic and transportation of essential goods. Severe storms also affect operations at oil and gas fields in the region and threaten lives of people and animals. Sea levels may rise about 1.5 metres above astronomical tide, said Madhavan Nair Rajeevan, secretary at India's Ministry of Earth Sciences. Wind speeds will likely reach as high as 200 km/h at the time of the landfall in Odisha, he said. A satellite image of Cyclone Fani in the Bay of Bengal on Wednesday. The state was battered by a super cyclone in 1999 with wind speeds that were estimated to have reached a maximum 270 km/h leaving almost 10,000 people dead. The ensuing rains caused flooding and temporarily cut off the state from the rest of the country. "We are on the job and have sufficient time to evacuate people from the coastal areas," said Bishnupada Sethi, special relief commissioner with the Odisha government. About 150,000 people have already been relocated and contingency plans are in place to deal with heavy flooding, he said.

The administration has stocked up medicines and food supplies in preparation, said N.C. Marwah, a member of the National Disaster Management Authority. As many as 48 National Disaster Response teams are ready to be deployed, he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who held a meeting on Thursday to review the preparations, has asked top officials to take preventive measures as well as make preparations for relief and rescue operations, according to a government statement. The cyclonic storm Fani over the south-east Bay of Bengal to the east of Sri Lanka In the beach village of Chandrabhaga, police helped residents move from thatched-roof homes to a nearby storm shelter on Thursday afternoon. They sat on the floor of the shelter or in plastic chairs awaiting the arrival of the storm. By evening, the sea had turned rough and strong winds were lashing buildings along the coast.

The meteorological department warned of the "total destruction" of thatched huts in some districts, major damage to roads, the uprooting of power poles and potential danger from flying objects. Heavy showers are expected in some parts of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha for two days through Friday, while rain is seen in West Bengal for two days through Saturday, the weather office said. Sea conditions are likely to be rough along the coast in some parts of these three states in the coming days, it said. People run away from high tide at a beach in the Puri district of eastern Odisha state, India. Fishermen have been asked not to venture into deep seas and those who are already there have been advised to return to the coast. Indian Railways has cancelled more than 100 trains in the region and diverted several others to avoid damage to passengers and goods, a spokesman for the ministry said. Neighbouring Bangladesh also issued a weather warning. Mongla and Payra ports have been asked to hoist danger signal number seven on a scale of 10, according to the Bangladesh Meteorological Department. The country has suspended river transport on all routes, State Minister for Shipping Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury said in Dhaka.

The cyclone forecast has prompted several companies with operations in the region to take precautionary measures. State-run power producer NTPC may temporarily shut one to two units at its 3000-megawatt Talcher Kaniha plant in Odisha if the cyclone disrupts grid lines, said operations director Prakash Tiwari. Indian Oil, which operates a 15-million-tonnes-a-year refinery at Paradip in coastal Odisha, will take necessary steps to control the impact, said B.V. Rama Gopal, refineries director. Indian fishermen attempt to bring their boat ashore amid strong winds at Chandrabhaga beach in the Puri district of eastern Odisha state, India. "Weather is clear as of now and operations are all normal," he said. "Paradip refinery is designed to withstand cyclones with speed of more than 200 kilometres per hour." Oil & Natural Gas said it has towed five of its six drilling rigs operating in the Bay of Bengal to the coast as a precautionary measure, and evacuated almost 500 people working at its offshore oil and gas fields in the region. State-run National Aluminium said a cable belt conveyor from the mines to its refinery will be stopped in the event of heavy gusts, while heavy equipment operating in the field will get proper anchoring and locking.</s>Cyclone Fani, which is expected to make landfall in the eastern states of India, is putting 800,000 people directly at risk, including 350,000 children, Save the Children warns - with many more affected by heavy rains, possible flash floods and landslides both in coastal and urban areas.

The cyclone has been building up in the Bay of Bengal, which is known as the Bay of Storms and is expected to make landfall on Friday in the states Andrha Pradesh and Odisha. Winds of up to 200 km/h and heavy rains are threatening homes, schools and livelihoods.

The Government of India has started evacuating close to a million people and bringing them to safer zones or cyclone centers.

Save the Children has a team of specialists travelling to Odisha ahead of Cyclone Fani making landfall, to be on the ground when the storm hits and to assess the needs as soon as possible. Save the Children has shelter, household and school materials ready for distribution.

Save the Children has been working in India since the 1960s and has been responding to natural disasters for decades. Over the past four years, Save the Children has set up 80 youth response teams with 2000 youth members and 1200 younger children in 80 villages in Andhra Pradesh, to make sure communities stand prepared for natural disasters, working in close cooperation with the government.

Vikas Gora, Save the Children's General Manager for Southern India, said: "This area is prone to cyclones, we have almost one every alternate year. So, we have been helping communities to prepare by training warning groups and rescue groups. We have trained around 3200 youth to help their communities get through storms like this.

"Also, we have been stocking the villages with emergency equipment, sirens, stoves, cutting materials and rice. And we've given them computers and radio's run on solar panels, as usually the first casualty of a storm is electricity. That way, they get real time warnings and information, and they are able to share information with the government and the info goes both ways."

In Odisha, Save the Children works in 200 schools and 300 governmental pre-primary school to help educate children in almost 300 villages, in the area of child protection and education and preparing them for natural disasters.</s>NEW DELHI
• A Category 4 cyclone gathered speed yesterday and was set to hit India this morning as almost one million people were evacuated in the eastern state of Odisha.

Severe cyclonic storm Fani was churning up the Bay of Bengal yesterday evening about 320km south-south-west of the Hindu temple town of Puri, where special trains were put on to evacuate tourists and the beaches were empty. Cyclone Fani is forecast to be the worst storm since 2014.

The Indian Navy and Coast Guard have deployed ships and helicopters for relief operations, according to a government statement. Sea levels may rise about 1.5m above the astronomical tide, said Mr Madhavan Nair Rajeevan, secretary at India's Ministry of Earth Sciences. Wind speeds are likely to reach as high as 200kmh at the time of the landfall in Odisha, he said.

Hundreds of thousands of people along India's north-east coastline were evacuated by boat, bus and train ahead of the cyclone making landfall, with many villagers piling household possessions into trucks before fleeing their homes.

"We are on the job and have sufficient time to evacuate people from the coastal areas," said Mr Bishnupada Sethi, special relief commissioner with the Odisha government.

The administration has stocked up medicines and food supplies in preparation, said Mr N. C. Marwah, a member of the National Disaster Management Authority.

As many as 48 National Disaster Response teams are ready to be deployed, he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who held a meeting yesterday to review the preparations, has asked top officials to take preventive measures as well as make preparations for relief and rescue operations, according to a government statement.</s>NEW DELHI: Cyclone Fani has made landfall in Puri coast, Odisha. Landfall process will continue till noon. On Sunday, the Cyclone Warning Division of the Meteorological department notified that Cyclone Fani (it’s been named by Bangladesh), inching closer to the coasts of north Tamil Nadu and south Andhra Pradesh , is likely to intensify into a "severe cyclonic storm".Last year, Cyclone Gaja had battered the Tamil Nadu coast, killing at least 20 people and causing widespread destruction.As many as 26 of the 35 deadliest tropical cyclones in history have been Bay of Bengal storms. Bangladesh has seen the most casualties, accounting for over 40% of the world’s tropical cyclone-associated deaths in the past two centuries (India accounts for a quarter of the deaths). In India, Odisha has seen most number of cyclones (98 between 1891 and 2002) but Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have had the most casualties in recent times.More cyclones are formed in the Bay of Bengal than Arabian Sea due to wind patterns (that keep oceans cooler on the western side). Even among those formed along the western coast, many move towards Oman instead of hitting Indian shores. Storms formed on the eastern coast, however, are more intense and since states on that side have relatively flatter topography compared to the western coast they can’t deflect the winds.April to December is the cyclone season but over 65% of all cyclones occur in the last four months of the year.Cyclones are classified based on the wind speed around the low-pressure area. Wind speed of over 62 kmph is classified as a tropical cyclone and assigned a name. It becomes a severe cyclonic storm if the speed is between 89 and 118 kmph and a very severe cyclonic storm if the speed is between 119 and 221 kmph. Those with higher speeds are categorised as super cyclonic storms.Meanwhile, pre-monsoon rainfall from March to April, a phenomenon critical to agriculture in some parts of the country, has recorded a 27% deficiency, according to the meteorological department.</s>Only twelve people have been killed

NEW DELHI: UN and other experts on Saturday praised India for its early warning systems and rapid evacuation of more than 1 million people, which they said helped minimise loss of life from a deadly cyclone that battered its eastern coast.Cyclone Fani, one of the biggest to hit India in years,, leaving a trail of devastation across the coastal state of 46 million people before swinging towards Bangladesh.In 1999, the same state was hit by a devastating 30-hour super-cyclone that saw a storm surge sweep 20 kilometres inland. Unprepared for the scale of the disaster, authorities struggled to evacuate the stricken population and some 10,000 people were killed.This time, improved forecasting models, public awareness campaigns and well-drilled evacuation plans - backed up by an army of responders and volunteers - has seen Odisha's inhabitants spared the worst of Fani's fury.by the cyclone in India - which escaped being hit by a major storm surge - and at least 160 injured.As soon as it became clear this week that Fani was on course to hit Odisha, emergency teams began the mammoth task of evacuating those living in low-lying regions, moving 1.2 million residents away from danger areas and in to temporary shelters.Alerts asking residents to stay indoors and follow the dos and don'ts were issued repeatedly on TV and radio, and broadcast through loudspeakers in public places.The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) praised the government's "effective" evacuation, saying it had "saved many lives".The state government in Odisha along with national disaster response teams and volunteers have worked in tandem to carry out evacuations and set up safe shelters.Workers have been equipped with satellite phones and inflatable boats along with food and medicines to distribute in the storm's aftermath.Some 7,000 kitchens catering to 9,000 shelters have been set up, thanks to an army of 45,000 volunteers.Emergency workers are now focussing on restoring damaged infrastructure, including power and telecom lines, and clearing roads.Mahesh Palawat, the vice-president of meteorology at private forecaster Skymet, said the early warnings had been vital in allowing authorities to plan in advance."From April 25 onwards we (the Indian Meteorological Department and Skymet) had been monitoring the track and intensity of the cyclone continuously, what time it would make landfall and the probable points of landfall," Palawat told AFP.Numerical models, adopted by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) in 2014 to supplement the more traditional statistical modelling, allowed forecasters to track Fani's progress and wind profiles in the upper atmosphere.Denis McClean, a spokesperson for UNISDR, said "the almost pinpoint accuracy" of the early warnings from the IMD had enabled the authorities to "conduct a well-targeted evacuation plan."Social media users also lauded the Indian authorities for averting a mass human disaster, despite the fact that a densely populated region was in the eye of the storm."Credit goes to #India authorities for their aggressive pre-impact response, including massive evacuations," wrote Josh Morgerman, a US-based cyclone expert.</s>Terrifying footage shows a 130mph cyclone slamming into India today in a ferocious storm which has forced more than a million people to flee their homes.

Cyclone Fani ripped into the country's east coast on Friday morning, tearing down trees, blowing away food stands and cutting off power and water.

Experts fear rising sea levels could cause a five-foot storm surge in Odisha, where the storm made landfall today and where 10,000 people died in a 1999 storm.

It is expected to barrel into West Bengal state and towards Bangladesh on a trajectory which will take it over the homes of 100million people.

Footage shows trees bending violently in the wind and debris flying across roads as people struggled to stay upright.

Wind and rain were seen lashing into abandoned homes while street stands had completely toppled over.

Some 3,000 shelters in schools and government buildings have been set up to accommodate more than a million people in Odisha.

Ports have been closed but the Indian Navy has sent six warships to the region while India's biggest oil and gas producer ONGC evacuated almost 500 workers from offshore rigs.

Meteorologists have warned of the 'total destruction' of thatched houses, the uprooting of power and communication poles.

They also predicted the 'flooding of escape routes' and damage to crops in some areas.

Measures were also being taken to protect the eight-and-a-half-century old Jagannath temple in the city.

The storm made landfall in Hindu holy town of Puri, a major tourist destination on the coast that attracts millions of visitors every year.

More than 100,000 dry food packets are ready to be dropped if needed, reports said.

Flights have been cancelled in and out of Odisha's capital Bhubaneswar and Kolkata in West Bengal until at least Saturday.

Electricity and water supplies were already cut for much of the city of 200,000 people.

India's National Disaster Response Force shared images of several uprooted trees along the coast in Andhra Pradesh state to the south.

The NDRF teams were trying to remove the fallen trees and branches to ensure they do not become projectiles if the winds intensify.

In Bangladesh, disaster management chief Mohammad Hashim said that more than 4,000 cyclone shelters have been opened in 19 coastal districts.

The country's weather bureau has told deep-sea fishing vessels to stay near the coast, while inland water transport activities were suspended.

Media reports said hundreds of trees were uprooted at Chilika Lake just south of Puri in the first violent winds.

Metal shutters covered store fronts and sand blew up the streets from the nearby beach.

But a few thousand are known to have defied the evacuation orders in Puri. Some took shelter in local schools and hotels.

Krishna Chandra Sahu, 43, took seven members of his family to a city hotel to ride out the storm.

'We didn't feel our home was safe so we came here,' he told AFP.

'We will just stay for the day until the cyclone has passed. We are not scared but we feel safer here.'

Experts fear the cyclone could cause sea levels to rise and bring about a storm surge, sending a destructive wall of water gushing over the land.

Storm surge is not the result of rainfall or flooding, rather it happens when powerful winds push ocean water rushing toward land.

Surges can extend for dozens of miles inland, overwhelming buildings quickly and cutting off roads. People can end up drowning in their cars or homes.

Indian forecasters said a five-foot surge could hit the east coast, which is vulnerable to destructive storms.

In 2017 Cyclone Ockhi left nearly 250 people dead and more than 600 missing in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

The 1999 storm wreaked $4.5 billion worth of damage, as well as taking 10,000 lives.</s>The extremely severe Fani battered the Odisha coast, with a wind speed of 175 to 200 km per hour after landfall at Puri on Friday morning. The storm has so far claimed eight lives and caused a severe damage to property and public infrastructure in 13 coastal districts of the state.

At least three people were reported to have been killed in Puri, besides another three in the Bhubaneswar region, and one each in Kendrapara and Nayagarh.

Thousands of collapsed kutcha houses, and uprooted trees and electricity poles disrupting road travel and electricity supply were all a bitter reminiscence of the super of 1999, one of the worst calamities in the state’s history that claimed over 10,000 lives.

Though the loss of human lives this time was much less than in 1999, overall losses on account of shifting 1.08 million people to safer places before the Fani struck and the damage to infrastructure were no less, said a government official. More than 500,000 trees were uprooted in Khurda and Puri districts alone.

 



ALSO READ: Cyclone Fani LIVE: Bhubaneshwar flights expected to resume by Saturday

Mobile towers were blown away at many places, disrupting telecommunication. All fixed-line and cellular phones were down in Puri district, said Special Relief Commissioner Bishnupada Sethi. Amid incessant rains accompanied by gusty wind, many parts of coastal Odisha were inundated by flood water.

"More than 100,000 electric poles have been ravaged in Puri and Khurda districts. Not a single electric pole is standing in Puri in the aftermath of the The restoration of power will take longer than what we had anticipated. In Bhubaneswar and Puri, the transmission infrastructure needs to be relaid. No assessment of monetary damage has been made yet," said Hemant Sharma, secretary (energy) in the Odisha government.

The absence of electricity plunged many towns, including capital Bhubaneswar, into darkness as the evening fell. The effect was worse on low-tension lines that feed the domestic power consumers, an official said.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik held a high-level meeting of senior officials in various departments this evening and directed them to undertake immediate relief and restoration work on a war footing in affected areas.



ALSO READ: Severity of cyclones in Bay of Bengal on the rise, say scientists

Summer crops, orchards and plantations had been devastated at a large scale, government sources told Business Standard.

With heavy downpour continuing in the state, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has warned that a storm surge of about 0.5 to one metre above the astronomical tide might inundate the low-lying areas of Kendrapada, Bhadrak Jagatsinghpur and Balasore districts, even as the extremely severe cyclonic storm dissipates into a severe one on its way to West Bengal.

In view of safety and security of passengers, the East Coast Railways has cancelled 56 more trains. The regional railway had earlier announced the cancellation of 169 trains and diverted several others. All flight operations to and from Biju Patnaik International Airport in Bhubaneswar have also been stopped until tomorrow.</s>NEW DELHI — Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated along India's eastern coast on Thursday as authorities braced for a cyclone moving through the Bay of Bengal that was forecast to bring extremely severe wind and rain.

The India Meteorological Department in New Delhi said Cyclone Fani was expected to make landfall on Friday with gale-force winds of up to 124 mph likely starting Thursday night. It warned of "extremely heavy falls" over parts of the state of Odisha and its southern neighbor Andhra Pradesh.

India's National Disaster Management Authority forecast "high to phenomenal" sea conditions for most of the Indian states along the Bay of Bengal. Fishermen were advised not to venture into deep waters. A 4.9-foot storm surge was expected to inundate low-lying areas.

Fearing that Fani could be the worst storm since 1999, when a cyclone killed around 10,000 people and devastated large parts of Odisha, Indian officials put the navy, air force, army and coast guard on high alert, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Cabinet ministers and weather and disaster-response officials for a briefing on the measures being taken.

The Meteorological Department projected "total destruction" of thatched-roof huts, flooding of farmland and orchards, and the uprooting of telephone poles.

Odisha's special relief commissioner, Bishnupada Sethi, said that preparations for Fani included the country's largest evacuation operation, of around 880,000 people.

More than 800 shelters were opened and around 100,000 dry food packets were ready to be airdropped.

"We've been preparing plans for the last few days to ensure that all the people who are vulnerable will be shifted to our cyclone centers," Sethi said.

Tourists were provided special trains to leave the popular beach town of Puri in Odisha on Thursday, according to Indian media reports.

The National Disaster Response Force dispatched 54 rescue and relief teams to flood-prone areas along the coast and as far afield as Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a group of islands that comprise a state located about 840 miles east of mainland India in the Bay of Bengal.

The teams included doctors, engineers and deep-sea divers equipped with boats, scuba sets and satellite phones, the group said in a statement.

In the coastal city of Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh, strong winds and heavy rain battered an empty beach where fishing boats had been left on shore. People piled into truck beds and buses reinforced with tin sheeting.

Residents tied plastic tarps over their tin-roof shacks before abandoning them.

Fani was also forecast to hit Bangladesh, tracking north through ports including Cox's Bazar, the coastal district where more than a million Rohingya from Myanmar live in refugee camps.

Aid agencies warned that the Rohingya were at threat. Hillol Sobhan, local communications director for the group NGO Care, said it is keeping emergency supplies for the refugees in Cox's Bazar.

The Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority said it suspended operations of all vessels. Authorities also halted activities at Chittagong Seaport, which handles 80 percent of the country's overseas trade.</s>[India], May 4 (ANI): The Odisha government claimed the cyclone 'Fani' has led to one of the biggest human evacuations in history as a record 1.2 million people were evacuated in 24 hours including 3.2 lakh from Ganjam district and 1.3 lakh from Puri.

"3.2 lakh from Ganjam and 1.3 lakh people from Puri were evacuated with almost 7000 kitchens catering to 9000 shelters were made functional overnight. The mammoth exercise involved more than 45 thousand volunteers, 3 million targeted messages, 2000 emergency workers, youth clubs and other civil society organizations, ODRAF, NDRF, PRI agencies," said Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.

Patnaik also added that the death toll is only in single digit without mentioning the exact number. "According to our latest report, it is only in single digit," he said.

Cyclone Fani on Friday made landfall in Puri with a wind speed of over 200 Km/hr. 'Kuccha' houses were completely destroyed in Puri, parts of Khurda, and other districts. The cyclone tore apart critical infrastructure, especially power, telecom and water supply. Lakhs of trees were uprooted blocking roads, breaking homes and damaging infrastructure.

The cyclone also triggered heavy rainfall in the state. It left three people dead and over 160 injured along with leaving behind a trail of destructions that included damaged houses, uprooted trees and electricity poles.

The impact of the "extremely severe cyclonic storm" was also felt in parts of West Bengal, including the beach town of Digha, and Andhra Pradesh.

The Odisha government is now on the task of restoring infrastructure afresh in Puri district and parts of Khurda, which is severally ruined. The districts of Cuttack, Bhadrak, Kendrapada, Jagatsinghpur, Balasore, Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar, Dhenkanal, Nayagada have also been affected.

"In the event of such a major calamity like this, where Odisha was hit by close to a Super Cyclone, instead of it being a tragedy of humungous proportions, we are in the process of restoring critical infrastructure," said the chief minister.

The cyclonic storm 'Fani' that wreak havoc in Odisha on Friday and West Bengal on Saturday, has now weakened into a deep depression and lay centred over Bangladesh and expected to weaken further into a depression.

"The CS 'FANI' over Gangetic West Bengal moved further east-northeastwards and weakened into a Deep Depression, lay centred at 08.30 hrs IST over Bangladesh near lat 23.6degN & long 88.8degE. It is very likely to move northeastwards, weaken further into a Depression during next 06 hrs," tweeted India Meteorological Department (IMD). (ANI)</s>NEW DELHI (AP) — Cyclone Fani has made landfall on India's eastern coast as a grade 5 storm, lashing the emptied beaches with rain and wind gusting up to 205 kilometers (127 miles) per hour.

The India Meterological Department says the "extremely severe" cyclone in the Bay of Bengal hit the coastal state of Odisha around 8 a.m. on Friday.

India's National Disaster Response Force says around 1.2 million people have been evacuated from low-lying areas of Odisha and moved to nearly 4,000 shelters.

Odisha Special Relief Commissioner Bishnupada Sethi says communications have been disrupted in some areas, but no deaths or injuries have been reported.

Fani is the fiercest storm since 1999, when a cyclone killed around 10,000 people and devastated large parts of Odisha.
Cyclone Fani, an extremely severe category 4 storm and one of the strongest in recent years, makes landfall at the coastal town of Puri in the Indian state of Odisha. Eight people have been killed in India, according to the Press Trust of India, and hundreds more injured. Severe damage and flooding has been reported. One million Indians and 2.1 million Bangladeshis have been evacuated. A storm surge possibly up to 1.5m (5ft) is expected. The storm, weakening as it travels northeast through India, is expected to reach Chittagong in Bangladesh Saturday.