02 May 2019| 26 Shabaan 1440
Indian government is on high alert as the country’s east coast braces for a tropical cyclone.
Nearly 800,000 people in India’s eastern coastal districts have been evacuated in the face of a major cyclone packing winds of up to 200 kilometres an hour, officials said on Thursday.
Tropical Cyclone Fani, brewing in the Bay of Bengal some 450km offshore and moving westwards, is expected to make landfall on Friday afternoon near the town of Puri.
“Some 20,000 people have been shifted already,” Prabhat Ranjan Mohapatra, a senior officer at Odisha’s special relief commissioner office, told Anadolu Agency.
He said disaster teams have been deployed and 14 districts of the state are expected to come under the impact of Cyclone Fani.
India’s National Disaster Management Authority earlier this week said a severe cyclone will hit Odisha coast on May 3 with wind speeds of 175-185 km/h gusting up to 205 km/h.
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.
India’s weather department, in an advisory, asked all fishermen in the state to return to shore by late Wednesday.
