1999 cyclone survivors evacuated voluntarily before Phailin

People living on Odisha coastline could broadly be divided into two categories: those who had survived 1999 super cyclone and were prepared for Phailin, and those who were facing the fury of a cyclone for the first time.

Updated on: Oct 17, 2013, 16:29:46 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, ERSAMMA/GANJAM

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People living on Odisha coastline could broadly be divided into two categories: those who had survived 1999 super cyclone and were prepared for Phailin, and those who were facing the fury of a cyclone for the first time.

In Ganjam district, considered to be the epicentre of Phailin, people had to be forcibly evacuated from their homes. Unaware of the disaster a cyclone could wreck, people resisted the government's evacuation drive in this area.

However, 200 km towards its east in Jagatsinghpur district, ground zero of the 1999 super cyclone, people abandoned their homes even before the officials swung into action.

“We know what a cyclone can do,” said Dinu Bandhu Behera of Jagatsinghpur’s Saili village, who lost his parents and a sister in the 1999 super cyclone which claimed over 10,000 lives.

“I was swept away by water for three km. I survived by holding on to a tree. I stayed on the tree for almost a day before a helicopter spotted me and I was rescued,” he said with tears streaming down his face.

Every home in the affected regions of the district has a story of pain, horror and bravado. And when the first message about another cyclone of similar or higher intensity was flashed, they knew what to do.

The villagers collected adequate ration with utensils for community cooking and shifted to cyclone shelters built after the 1999 disaster. Arrangements were also made to ensure they had enough clean water, medicines and bedding to cope with a longer duration cyclone. Fortunately, Phailin’s impact was much less than anticipated.

Prashant Sahoo of Dahi Bada, one of the worst affected villages during the 1999 cyclone, said the entire village had shifted to the shelter much before Phailin was supposed to hit Ganjam district, about 200 km away. “The local officials arrived when we were shifting some essentials to the cyclone shelter,” said Jasyajit Mandol of the neighbouring Paroda village.

This preparedness was lacking in Ganjam district, where the local administration had to forcefully evict people from their homes and keep them in shelters. “Many people were not willing to shift to the cyclone shelters. We forcibly pulled them out of their homes, sent them in a vehicle and kept them in a shelter,” said BB Rao, a constable in Marine police station in Arjapalli area of Ganjam district.

People in Ganjam had not experienced anything like Phailin before. The 1999 super cyclone was concentrated in the eastern side of Odisha and Ganjam had witnessed storm with little flooding. October 12 night was fiercer with waves up to 10-15 meters but the pre-cyclone evacuation by the local administration ensured that many lives were saved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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