"Warnings help India’s response to huge cyclone; Evacuations seen limiting deaths" by Gardiner Harris | New York Times, October 14, 2013
NEW DELHI — Demonstrating how much India has transformed in recent years....
Heavy rains and surging sea water destroyed more than 1.23 million acres of crops worth an estimated $395 million, the Associated Press reported, quoting S.N. Patro, the disaster minister of Orissa state, where most of the damage occurred.
And there is already a hunger problem in India.
Just 14 years ago, a cyclone in roughly the same place killed more than 10,000 people — another in more than a century of predictably deadly cyclones to roar out of the Bay of Bengal. While an accurate assessment of Phailin’s effects will probably take weeks, there were tentative signs Sunday that the death toll was likely to be relatively modest.
There are many reasons for the change, but a vastly improved communications system is probably the most important. Nearly 1 billion people routinely use mobile phones in India, up from fewer than 40 million at the turn of the century.
Even many of the poorest villages now have televisions, and India’s news media market is saturated with 24-hour news channels that have blanketed the nation’s airwaves with coverage of the storm.
Many villagers refused to leave land and livestock during the worst of the storm, according to many reports. But almost none were unaware of the coming danger. And that is a huge change.
Dr. Jibanananda Mohanty, a retired veterinary surgeon from Bhubaneshwar in Odisha, said by telephone Sunday that he had spent a harrowing night listening to howling winds and crashing trees outside and his home remained without electricity and water.
But he had days to store enough water, milk, vegetables, and other supplies to carry him through.
India’s state and central governments spent days preparing for the worst....
Service members from the country’s army, air force, and navy were deployed to help in rescue and relief operations, said A.K. Antony, India’s defense minister.
The air force deployed C-130 aircraft, recently bought from the United States, to help in the efforts, and the navy had diving teams with inflatable rafts deployed at important locations, Antony said.
Visakhapatnam, which was near the center of the storm, experienced little damage apart from a collapsed sea wall in the fishing colony.
By 9 a.m., the sun was shining, businesses had opened at their usual times, and traffic had resumed its usual chaos. People emerged from their homes on Sunday with a sense of relief and, in some case, an I-knew-it-all-along attitude.
Tousis Ahmed, 30, who is employed in India’s emerging technology industry, stayed out late Saturday and even went to the beach, which was cordoned off, to check on the ocean.
“The waves were calm, so I went home and had a sound sleep,” Ahmed said.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"For cyclone victims in India, a bitter return home" by Kay Johnson | Associated Press, October 15, 2013
PODAMPETTA, India — The fact that Agya Amma was still here Monday, surveying the ruins, was proof that this was a different kind of disaster for India.
Unlike past storms that have lashed India’s eastern coast, Cyclone Phailin did not extract a heavy human toll, thanks to a massive and improbable evacuation effort that moved nearly 1 million residents of one of India’s poorest regions out of the storm’s path and into government shelters.
By Monday, only 25 people had been reported killed, even though tens of thousands of homes were destroyed. The evacuation was earning rare praise for a country known for high death tolls in large-scale disasters....
Despite the comparatively low number of deaths, Phailin has still dealt its share of misery. Hundreds of thousands of coastal residents found themselves huddling in shelters, their homes flattened and crops destroyed by the most powerful storm to hit India in more than a decade....
That can't be good in famine-weary India.
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Also see: 30 dead after floods in India
