NEW DELHI // At least six people were killed on Sunday when Cyclone Hudhud made landfall on India’s eastern coast, unleashing winds of nearly 200kph.
Approaching from the Bay of Bengal, the cyclone hit Visakhapatnam, a major port and a city of two million residents, just before noon.
By then, nearly 370,000 people had been evacuated, from coastal areas in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, as a safety measure.
The damage to Visakhapatnam was “very serious”, K Hymavathi, the special commissioner for disaster management for the state of Andhra Pradesh, told Reuters.
Chandrababu Naidu, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, called the cyclone a “national calamity” and asked for immediate federal aid of 20 billion rupees (Dh1.2bn).
“The amount of damage is yet to be assessed,” Mr Naidu said. “Our priority is rescue and rehabilitation operations.”
The wind ripped roofs off houses, uprooted trees, and brought down electricity pylons, disrupting communications for much of the day. The sea pounded furiously over the port’s breakwater, sending massive waves crashing over the coastline.
"We can hear the wind hammering really hard on the windows of our apartment," Ajay Naidu, a sales executive living in Visakhapatnam, told The National Sunday morning, before phone lines went down. "If we're indoors, we'll be safe, I think. I hope nobody will venture out foolishly."
The most intense phase of the cyclone lasted nearly six hours, broken only by a brief afternoon lull.
By the evening, the storm had lost much of its energy, with wind speeds dropping to about 130kph, according to the Indian government’s meteorological department.
The torrential rain may yet wreak further havoc by flooding the rivers of southern Odisha.
Wind speeds are expected to drop further, to about 60kph, by Monday afternoon.
Hudhud brought back memories of Cyclone Phailin, which hit Odisha last October, with winds of nearly 260kph at its most intense.
Roughly a million people were displaced by Cyclone Phailin, and 27 people died – a relatively low death toll, given that nearly 10,000 people died in super-cyclone Odisha in 1999.
As with Phailin, the Indian government acted promptly in evacuating people who live and work near the coast. On Saturday, Narendra Modi, the prime minister, chaired an emergency meeting to review the states’ preparedness for Hudhud.
More than 2,000 personnel of the national disaster response force, split into 42 teams, were pressed into service. Air and train services were cancelled or diverted around the area of landfall. In Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, the government urged people to use cyclone shelters.
“You didn’t have cyclone shelters like this back in 1999,” said Jatin Singh, the chief executive of SkyMet, a private weather forecasting service. “We didn’t have many ways of forewarning for storms like this. Which is why you saw 10,000 people dying back then. I don’t think you’ll ever see that kind of death toll now.”
It will take three or four weeks to assess the economic damage, Mr Singh said.
“In all such storms, it’s usually the poor who get affected the most, especially in rural areas, where farms will be flooded.”
The meteorological department has predicted continuous rain in the area for at least two more days as the storm moves inland, in a north-westerly direction, while losing intensity.
Hudhud is expected to be downgraded into a depression on Monday.
ssubramanian@thenational.ae
