Sunday, October 13, 2013

Cyclone Phailin Leaves Debris And Relatively Few Casualties






  • Hide caption

    A woman returns to the cyclone-hit Arjipalli village on the Bay of Bengal coast in Ganjam district, Orissa state, India, Sunday. The state's Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik says that a full recovery will be a "big challenge."





    Biswaranjan Rout/AP






  • Hide caption

    A family uses a motorcycle to cross a flooded road as they return to their village near Gopalpur, Orissa state, India, Sunday.





    Bikas Das/AP






  • Hide caption

    A displaced Indian man carries his children at Sonupur village, around 15 kilometers from Gopalpur, Sunday.





    MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images






  • Hide caption

    People try to remove an electric pole that fell down at the cyclone-hit Arjipalli village on the Bay of Bengal coast in Ganjam district, Orissa state, India, Sunday. Mass evacuations spared India the widespread deaths many had feared from a powerful cyclone that roared ashore over the weekend.





    Biswaranjan Rout/AP






  • Hide caption

    An Indian woman carries empty water pots at the fisherman's colony in Gopalpur Sunday. Cyclone Phailin left a trail of destruction along India's east coast after a large evacuation helped minimize casualties.





    MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images






  • Hide caption

    A municipal workers cuts an uprooted tree from Cyclone Phailin to clear a main highway in Berhampur, India, Sunday. The immense and powerful cyclone that lashed the Indian coast forced nearly a million people to evacuate from the coast.





    Bikas Das/AP






  • Hide caption

    A woman rests near her damaged house after returning to the cyclone hit Podampeta village on the Bay of Bengal coast in Ganjam district, Orissa state, India, Sunday.





    Biswaranjan Rout/AP






  • Hide caption

    Residents walk through floodwaters Sunday near where cyclone Phailin made landfall at Gopalpur one day earlier. Phailin left a trail of destruction along India's east coast and at least 14 people dead, officials say.





    MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images






  • Hide caption

    An Indian man rides a bicycle past an uprooted tree following the cyclone in Gopalpur on Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013.





    MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images





Indian officials are reporting far fewer casualties than had been feared when the large and powerful cyclone Phailin struck the country's east coast Saturday. But the storm, which forced the evacuation of nearly one million people, has left flooding and destruction in its path.


One day after the storm struck the states of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh with winds of at least 125 mph, crews are working to clear fallen trees off roads and to open railway lines. And officials were voicing relief that the cyclone didn't approach the devastation brought by a 1999 "super-cyclone" that killed some 10,000 people in the same area.


Phailin has been blamed for 17 deaths, many caused by falling tree branches and collapsed houses. On Sunday, National Disaster Management Authority Marri Shashidhar Reddy said the mass evacuation had been effective. And he criticized international groups that had warned of more damage and stronger winds.


"After the exaggerated manner international agencies tried to portray it (the cyclone and disaster), the NDMA has done an excellent job," he said, according to Agence France-Presse.


The fact that this year's storm didn't exact such a staggering human toll as in 1999 is due to advances in India, according to Victor Mallet, the South Asia bureau chief for The Financial Times.


"Many more people have mobile phones. In the old days, it was just very hard to make contact with remote areas by landline, and now almost everybody has a mobile phone," Mallet tells NPR's Rachel Martin on today's Weekend Edition.



"So, I think that the better infrastructure plus the predictions that the storm was coming and the preparations that were made meant that the human damage, at least, was not as severe as it was back then," he says.


While India's chief weather agency has a website, it also used Facebook to raise alerts about the cyclone. Visits to the agency's site on Saturday found that its servers seemed to be overwhelmed — but the alerts were appearing on Facebook, making social media efforts even more vital.


The storm has left cars and trucks, trees and utility poles strewn across streets. Thousands of people who were displaced by the cyclone remain in temporary housing. The storm also destroyed hundreds of thousands of hectares of crops, officials say.


In Orissa, the state's Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik says that recovering from the strike will be a "big challenge," reports NDTV.


Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/13/233264356/cyclone-phailin-leaves-debris-and-relatively-few-casualties?ft=1&f=1001
Tags: Paula Patton   Lucas Cruikshank   cedar point   Asiana pilot names   Agnieszka Radwanska  

No comments:

Post a Comment