Cyclone Fani weakened to a depression as
it barrelled into Bangladesh on Saturday after leaving a trail of deadly
destruction in India, although a major human disaster looked to have
been averted.
Press reports said 12 people had died in India and police in Bangladesh
put the death toll there at the same number -- a fraction of the
casualty numbers seen in past cyclones, earning authorities praise from
the United Nations.
With 1.2 million evacuated in India's Odisha state, more than 1.6
million people were taken to shelters in Bangladesh, officials told AFP,
with at least 36 villages flooded by a storm surge and more than 2,000
homes destroyed.
"Six people died after they were hit by falling trees or collapsed
walls, and six have died from lightning," Bangladeshi disaster official
Benazir Ahmed told AFP.
In the coastal town of Banishanta, where embankments burst and some 250
families were marooned overnight, most houses were semi-submerged under
water while a few straw huts had been washed away.
"We are now trying to fix the dam otherwise we will have to pass the night outside," villager Sanjay Mondol told AFP.
Ferries on large rivers remained out of action but those on smaller
waterways resumed operations, and many people were beginning to return
home with the wind still strong and skies overcast.
India's Meteorological Department posted to Twitter Saturday that Fani had weakened to a depression over Bangladesh.
But the storm was still packing a punch, with winds of up to 70
kilometres (45 miles) per hour and heavy rain battering the Indian state
of West Bengal, its capital Kolkata and the Sundarbans mangrove forest
area overnight and on Saturday morning.
"It's a total mess in islands of the Sunderbans as the cyclone has
destroyed everything in its path, fuelling fears rivers could burst
their banks and leave vast areas underwater," said Manturam Pakhira,
Sunderbans affairs minister.
"Several homes have been flattened, roofs blown off, electric poles and trees toppled."
In Kolkata, home to 4.6 million people, 5,000 residents were removed from low-lying areas and old, dilapidated buildings.
"Nearly a dozen people were trapped as an old building in the northern
part of the city has collapsed," mayor Firhad Hakim said. "They have
been rescued and shifted to a safer place."
Kolkata's airport was meanwhile reopened, as was that of Bhubaneswar,
capital of Odisha, the Indian state whose 46 million people are among
India's poorest and who bore the brunt of Fani.
- Flying trees -
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, hoping to secure a second term in India's
ongoing election, tweeted that he would visit the state on Monday.
Fani made landfall in Odisha on Friday, packing winds gusting up to 200
kilometres (125 miles) an hour, sending coconut trees flying, knocking
down power lines and cutting off water and telecommunications.
Twelve people were killed there, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news
agency reported, including a teenage boy crushed under a tree and a
woman hit by concrete debris.
"It just went dark and then suddenly we could barely see five metres in
front of us," said one Puri resident. "The wind is deafening."
As Fani headed northeast, Odisha authorities on Saturday battled to
remove fallen trees and other debris strewn over roads and to restore
phone and internet services. Aerial pictures showed extensive flooding.
Gouranga Malick, 48, was solemnly picking up bricks after the small two-room house he shared with his family collapsed.
"I have never witnessed this type of devastation in my lifetime," he told AFP.
Eastern India is regularly buffeted by cyclones off the Bay of Bengal,
with 10,000 people killed in Odisha alone in 1999, mostly from a storm
surge bringing flooding and debris many miles inland.
This time better forecasting and mass evacuations helped to prepare Odisha, while no major storm surges were reported.
"Almost 7,000 kitchens catering to 9,000 shelters were made functional
overnight. This mammoth exercise involved more than 45,000 volunteers,"
Odisha's chief minister Naveen Patnaik said.
"Now the technology has improved vastly," Mahesh Palawat of Skymet, a
private weather forecaster, told AFP. "The administration got enough
time of around eight days to prepare and allocate disaster response
teams."
The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) praised India, saying
the accuracy of early warnings and "effective evacuation" of people in
Odisha "saved many lives".
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