New Delhi (dpa) – Authorities in Covid-19-battered India conducted mass evacuations on Tuesday as a powerful cyclone headed toward the country’s east coast, days after another severe storm claimed over 150 lives on the west coast.
Cyclone Yaas, hovering over the Bay of Bengal, was expected to hit Odisha and West Bengal states on Wednesday afternoon, packing winds of up to 165 kilometres per hour, the Indian Meteorological Department said.
According to disaster management officials, over 1.5 million people – 1 million in West Bengal and 500,000 in Odisha – were being moved to shelters from vulnerable areas. The storm disrupted efforts to fight the pandemic in India, the second most-infected country globally.
«It is proving a big challenge as we fight the second wave of Covid-19. Evacuees are being provided masks, hand sanitizers, while staff are ensuring that physical distancing protocols are maintained at the shelters,» Odisha’s disaster management official Kamal Lochan Mishra told dpa.
Cyclone Yaas follows a severe cyclone that hit India’s western coast on May 18, killing over 150 people – many of them in the sinking of a barge operating near an offshore oilfield.
The last major cyclone to hit the region, Amphan, battered the eastern coast, including Kolkata city and neighbouring Bangladesh, in May 2020, killing more than 100 people and leaving millions without electricity.
Cyclones often form over the Bay of Bengal between April and November, bringing widespread destruction and flooding to Indian coastal areas. The region’s worst-ever cyclone struck Odisha in 1999, claiming 10,000 lives and leaving 15 million homeless.
