BHUBANESWAR, India, May 2, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Nearly 800,000 people in
India’s eastern coastal districts have been evacuated ahead of the expected
arrival of a major cyclone packing winds of up to 200 kilometres (125 miles)
per hour, officials said Thursday.
The Indian weather service said Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm Fani is
expected to make landfall on Friday afternoon near the Hindu holy town of
Puri.
A state relief department official told AFP that 780,000 people were moved
to safer places overnight from at least 13 districts of Odisha state that
will bear the brunt of the powerful cyclone.
“More people are being moved to safer places,” an official from the
department told AFP.
Some 1,000 shelters in schools and government buildings have been set up to
accommodate more than a million people.
On Thursday the storm, which reports said was the biggest to hit eastern
India in nearly two decades, was brewing in the Bay of Bengal some 450
kilometres offshore and moving westwards.
The cyclone was expected to pack sustained wind speeds of 180-190 kmh,
bringing gusts of up to 200 kmh, and is equivalent in strength to a Category
3 to 4 hurricane.
It will be the fourth such storm to hit the country’s east coast in three
decades.
India’s weather office has warned that the high speed winds can uproot
trees, flatten crops, damage homes, power and communication infrastructure
along with flooding in low lying areas.
The neighbouring coastal states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have also
been put on high alert.
Storms regularly hit eastern and southeastern India between April and
December. In 2017, Cyclone Ockhi left nearly 250 people dead and more than
600 missing in Tamil Nadu and Kerala states.
Odisha had to evacuate some 300,000 people last October when its coastal
districts were battered by cyclone Titli, with winds up to 150 kmh (95 miles)
per hour and heavy rains.