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‘Prepared well to handle Cyclone Fani’: Odisha’s special relief commissioner
Odisha is bracing for Cyclone Fani as it hurtled towards the eastern state’s coastal areas and will make landfall on Friday.
Odisha is bracing for Cyclone Fani as it hurtled towards the eastern state’s coastal areas and will make landfall on Friday.
The state government has put in a number of measures to handle the aftermath of the extremely severe storm. The state’s special relief commissioner Bishnupada Sethi spoke to the Hindustan Times about Odisha’s preparations for the impending Cyclone Fani.
Excerpts from the interview:
Q: How prepared is the Odisha government to handle Cyclone Fani?
A: No amount of preparation is enough for a natural disaster, but we can say we are prepared well. The chief minister has ordered that there should not be single casualty due to Fani. To avert any deaths, we have made plans have been at the village level. As we got sufficient time before the landfall, lots of preparation has gone into identification of the vulnerable population.
We have got Doppler radars at Paradip and Gopalpur ports which are helping us track the cyclone accurately. The most important thing we have acquired is an Early Warning Dissemination System project that addresses the existing gap in disseminating disaster warning up to the community level. It is the first such system in the country and helping us target vulnerable people or people who are in the danger zone.
Q: The super-cyclone of 1999 was perhaps the most debilitating natural disaster that Odisha faced in the recent past. How has Odisha addressed its gaps in facing a natural disaster in these years?
A: In 1999, we did not have many resources. Now, there are 879 multipurpose cyclone shelters compared to 23 in 1999. We have built a large number of saline embankments that would stop the saline ingress in case of a storm surge. We have 50 volunteers attached to each of the cyclone shelters, who would be ready to help the local people come up to the cyclone shelters. We have around 400 community volunteers called Aapda Mitras in Puri and Jagatsinghpur districts who would undertake rescue operations in emergency situations. We have got satellite phones for all the district collectors and digital mobile radio connectivity. The communication system is foolproof which was not there earlier.
Q: In October last year, Cyclone Titli led to the death of 77 people, many of whom were from Gajapati district. You did not seem to be prepared for the deaths. How prepared are you for Titli-like situations?
A: Our response would depend on how good is the prediction of IMD (India Meteorological Department). We were all prepared for Cyclone Titli. But it gave a lot of surprises as it recurved causing landslide in Gajapati. This time we hope, IMD’s forecast would hold good. This time we have made preparations for coastal districts, the adjoining districts, the southern districts and also districts which are less vulnerable but likely to received some impact. We have made vulnerability analysis of each of the areas.
Earlier, we told people that cyclone is coming, but never made an assessment of the impact. Now, we are making an assessment of the impact such as how many people are going to be affected by a storm surge.
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