HYDERABAD, 23 September 2005 — Nearly 400 people who had been listed as missing in a storm off the southern coast of India were found alive after they took shelter on rooftops, trucks and buses, officials said yesterday.
But there were still scores missing, and survivors in neighboring Bangladesh, which was also hit by the storm in the Bay of Bengal on Monday, spoke of bodies floating in the sea.
At least 66 people have been killed so far, authorities in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh said, after the storm brought heavy rains, strong winds and flooding in the coastal villages. An Andhra Pradesh government official said floodwaters had since receded, allowing rescuers to reach the remote villages. “We have been able to move into villages and rescue people listed as missing,” state official Navin Mittal said.
But a fisherman who survived the storm in low-lying Bangladesh said many others were not so lucky. “I was lucky to come back. While returning to shore I saw several wrecked boats and bodies floating on the rough sea,” Idris Ali told reporters late on Wednesday in Barguna, a coastal district about 250 km south of the capital, Dhaka. “But we are not sure how many have died.” Storms and cyclones that form in the Bay of Bengal in September and October slam into India’s eastern coast and neighboring Bangladesh almost every year.
Andhra Pradesh was rushing experts to assess the devastation caused by powerful storms, officials said. While fresh rains drenched two adjoining states, the flood situation was easing in Andhra Pradesh, they said.
“The worst seems to be over as the levels of Godavari and Krishna rivers are receding and now there is no fresh threat of floods,” Andhra Pradesh disaster management commissioner Shashank Goel told AFP in the state capital Hyderabad.
“If all goes well we’ll start sending some of these displaced persons back home,” Goel said of the tens of thousands of residents evacuated to 473 emergency camps in 10 of the state’s 23 districts shattered by storms and rains.
The rains stopped yesterday in Andhra Pradesh but other officials said a heavy downpour in the swollen Godavari River’s upper catchment areas in adjoining Maharashtra state was causing concern. “This is an issue of worry,” an official from the state’s Agriculture Ministry said as Karnataka, another province shouldering Andhra Pradesh, reported nonstop rains in its Bidar district for the third straight day yesterday.
Commissioner Goel said officials and engineers were being sent to the coastal region where 3,672 villages and towns were lashed by the storm, locally nicknamed “Pyaar” (Myanmarese for “flattened”). “The ... repair work will begin only after the water recedes,” Goel said as normality gradually returned to the flooded Andhra cities of Vijaywada and Rajamundri.
The storm destroyed 275,000 acres (111,288 hectares) of farmland, breached 600 irrigation canals, swept away hundreds of bridges and roads and snapped electricity supplies across wide swathes of the state. More than 9,700 houses were completely destroyed by the powerful winds that barreled across the cotton- and rice-growing province off the Bay of Bengal.
Andhra Pradesh Agriculture Minister Raghuveera Reddy overnight said the rains accompanying the storms caused damage to the tune of 180 billion rupees ($420 million) to crops, state facilities and homes. Reddy, in a memorandum to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who visited Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday, sought federal assistance of 120 billion rupees. “Apart from the financial assistance we have also sought 1.2 million tons of rice and the prime minister’s response was quite positive,” state Chief Minister Rajasekhara Reddy separately told reporters in Hyderabad.
In nearby Orissa, the administration overnight evacuated 12,000 people from low-lying areas in 10 of the state’s 30 districts. Six people have died in Orissa. Indian coast guard ships were, meanwhile, scouring the Bay of Bengal for scores of fishermen who were out at sea when bad weather blocked their return to shore. Storms and cyclones which form over the Bay of Bengal in September and October every year kill hundreds and destroy cattle and crops in India’s eastern states and in Bangladesh. A super-cyclone that hit Orissa in 1999 claimed about 10,000 lives.
