India braces for big cyclone as rain, wind lash east coast
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Rain and wind lashed India’s east coast yesterday, forcing about 450,000 people to flee to shelters as one of the country’s largest cyclones closed in, threatening to cut a swathe of devastation through farmland and fishing hamlets.
Filling most of the Bay of Bengal, Cyclone Phailin was about 90 kilometers off the coast by late afternoon and was expected to strike the coast by nightfall with winds of between 210-220 kilometers per hour.
The storm was expected to affect 12 million people, most in the densely populated states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, weather and disaster management officials said.
Even before landfall, coconut trees in villages along the coast were bent and broken in the gusting wind. Electrical poles were brought down and roads were littered with debris.
In the first reported deaths, two people were killed by falling trees while a third when the walls of her mud house collapsed.
The weather department warned of extensive damage to mud houses, major disruption of power and communication lines, and flooding.
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