Odisha takes pride in the disaster management measures it has put in place since the 1999 Super Cyclone and has earned praise from all quarters, including the United Nations. Even during Cyclone Fani, its latest disaster, the state government received a pat on the back from everyone—PM Narendra Modi to the New York Times—for the massive evacuation exercise that saw an estimated 14 lakh people moved from the coast to safer locations in the hours leading up to the cyclone.
But all preparatory measures taken over the years came a cropper as Fani pounded the Puri coast on the morning of May 3 with a wind speed of 200 kmph. As the storm left behind a trail of destruction on its way to Bangladesh, it demolished the cyclone-eve claim of ‘zero casualty’ made by the state government. By May 13, the cyclone toll had mounted to 64, including 39 in Puri district alone, and might rise further. Much the same had happened during Cyclone Titli last October—it too began with a ‘zero casualty’ claim and ended up with 77 deaths!
A reason for the high casualty figure this time was that the Category 4 cyclone kept changing its course and speed as it hurtled along the Bay of Bengal towards the coast, gathering speed every hour. This made tracking its course difficult and caught the authorities off-guard. “It certainly behaved abnormally in a sense, making tracking its course difficult,” says Sarat Sahu, director at the Centre for Environment and Climate of the Shiksha O’ Anusandhan University and former long-time director of the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) Bhubaneswar centre.
Protesters block a highway in Puri.
“Cyclonic storms originating in the south of Sri Lanka on the equator in summer rarely intensify into major storms. When they do, they generally hit the Tamil Nadu-Andhra Pradesh coast and rarely head towards Odisha.”
Sheshadeba Nayak, who lost his nine-year-old deaf and dumb daughter in the cyclone, recounts the fateful day: “Since the evening of May 2, there was no power, phones weren’t working. And before the the lights (and TV) went off, we were told landfall would be at 5 pm. We were having an early meal at about 7.30 am, planning to rush to the cyclone shelter 2.5 km away right after, but the wind started blowing and one of the asbestos sheets of our roof hit my daughter on the head. For three days, I could not take her to the hospital as all roads were closed. When I finally managed to take her to the district hospital in Puri on May 6, the doctor said she was dead,” says Sheshadeba, sobbing.
Until the previous evening, the forecast indeed was that Fani would hit land at 5 pm. But the arrival time kept getting advanced every hour, and in the morning news came that it would have a landfall as early as 8 am! In sharp contrast, the IMD was spot on with its forecast of the exact time and location of the almost equally intense Cyclone Phailin’s landfall, which had hit the Gopalpur coast on October 12, 2013. That forecast was at least 12 hours before the landfall. Sheshadeba and many like him could have saved their near and dear ones had they known the time of Fani’s landfall well in advance.
