Tag Archives: Gujarat

Scores missing at sea, at least 19 dead as cyclone tears up Indian west coast

By Sumit Khanna

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) -The Indian Navy mounted a massive air and sea rescue mission on Tuesday for 81 oil workers and crew whose barge sank in heavy seas following a powerful cyclone that tore up the west coast killing at least 19 people.

Around 180 of those on board the barge, off the coast of Mumbai, were rescued from the huge waves as it sank, the navy said.

The cyclone has piled up pressure on authorities at a time when India is grappling with a staggering rise in coronavirus cases and deaths as well as a shortage of beds and oxygen in hospitals.

“This is one of the most challenging search and rescue operations I have seen in the last four decades,” Murlidhar Sadashiv Pawar, Deputy Chief of Naval Staff, told Reuters partner ANI on Tuesday.

Navy spokesman Vivek Madhwal said waves were reaching 20 to 25 feet. “The winds are high and the visibility is low,” he said.

Three more barges have gone adrift near the Gujarat coast but the rescue operations were said to be under control.

Cyclone Tauktae, the most powerful storm to batter the west coast in two decades, ripped out power pylons, trees and caused house collapses killing at least 19 people, authorities said.

The storm made landfall in Gujarat state on Monday and is expected to weaken gradually into a deep depression overnight, the Indian Meteorological Department said.

Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said 160 state roads have been destroyed, 40,000 trees uprooted and several houses damaged.

Navy spokesman Madhwal said five ships backed by surveillance aircraft were scouring the site of the sinking of the barge “P305” in the Bombay High oilfield, where the country’s biggest offshore oil rigs are located.

On Monday, the crew sent an SOS that the ship had lost control as the cyclone roared past Mumbai. Naval ships were deployed to the area and on Tuesday, as it started sinking, many of the crew were rescued from the sea.

The oilfields are around 70 km (45 miles) southwest of Mumbai. The barges are deployed by Afcons Infrastructure Limited, a construction and engineering company based in Mumbai, and were engaged in contract work awarded by Oil and Natural Gas Corp, country’s top exploration company.

Afcons did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment, while ONGC said in a statement it was extending help to the navy and coastguard in the rescue effort.

More than 200,000 people had been evacuated from their homes in Gujarat before Tauktae, packing gusts of up to 210 kph (130 mph), made landfall.

No damage has been reported at refineries located in Gujarat and sea ports that were expected to be in the storm’s path.

The Jamnagar refinery, the world’s biggest oil refinery complex owned by Reliance Industries, had reported no damage, a company spokesman told Reuters.

Operations at the Mundra port, India’s largest private port, have resumed, a port official said.

(Additional reporting by Aishwarya Nair and Sudarshan Varadhan; Writing by Sanjeev Miglani and Nupur Anand; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Alex Richardson and Nick Macfie)

India’s Gujarat state evacuates over 200,000 people as cyclone hits

By Sumit Khanna

AHMEDABAD (Reuters) -More than 200,000 people were evacuated from their homes in the Indian state of Gujarat and authorities shut ports and major airports as the most powerful cyclone in more than two decades made landfall in the state late on Monday.

Rain intensified and several incidents of power outages were reported in the state. Electricity pylons and trees were uprooted and buildings were damaged in coastal areas of Gujarat, state authorities said.

With the worst of the storm expected to last for several hours after it slammed into the state’s coast, it piles more pressure on Indian authorities already struggling with a huge caseload of COVID-19 infections.

“This cyclone is a terrible double blow for millions of people in India whose families have been struck down by record COVID infections and deaths. Many families are barely staying afloat,” said Udaya Regmi, South Asia head of delegation, International Federation of Red Cross.

The cyclone has already killed at least 16 people and left a trail of destruction as it brushed past the coastal states of Kerala, Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra, the authorities said.

“The landfall process has started, and it is expected to last for four hours. The intensity of the Cyclone Tauktae will go down once it is over,” Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said in a social media address on late Monday evening.

State revenue secretary Pankaj Kumar told Reuters it would be the most severe cyclone to hit Gujarat in at least 20 years. A 1998 cyclone killed at least 4,000 people and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage in Gujarat.

Regmi said the Indian Red Cross Emergency team was working with authorities and helping with the evacuations from low lying areas to relief centers further inland in the face of what he called a “monster storm”.

PRAYING FOR LIONS

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) categorized the storm, which formed in the Arabian Sea, as an “extremely severe” storm, upgrading it from “very severe”.

The cyclone brought gusts of up to 210 kph (130 mph) that would put it on par with a Category 3 hurricane, one level below the IMD’s super cyclone category.

Further down India’s western coast, the cyclone has lashed India’s financial hub of Mumbai, forcing authorities to suspend operations at the city’s airport and to close some main roads due to flooding. Tracks on Mumbai’s urban rail system, one of the world’s busiest, were also flooded.

Two barges with over 400 people on board were adrift near the Mumbai coastline and vessels were sent to provide help, said the local branch of India’s defense ministry.

As well as the 16 deaths reported in Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka, more than 25 fishing boats were missing, a coastguard official told Reuters.

The Gujarat Maritime Board, the state’s port regulator, directed hoisting of signals VIII to X, indicating great danger, at ports in the state. India’s largest private port at Mundra suspended operations for the day.

Authorities also fretted about the state’s Asiatic lions, an endangered species found only in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat where the cyclone is expected to inflict most damage.

“There are around 40 lions in some patches in coastal Saurashtra, and we are monitoring them. Some lions have already moved to higher grounds. We are keeping fingers crossed, and praying the lions will be safe,” Shyamal Tikadar, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests in Gujarat, told Reuters.

Rupani said all measures were being taken to deal with the situation.

“These are special circumstances. The administration is busy with the COVID-19 challenges, and is now gearing up to deal with the impact of the cyclone,” he added.

Gujarat and Mumbai both suspended their vaccination drives on Monday due to the cyclone.

(Reporting by Sumit Khanna in Ahmedabad, Rajendra Jadhav and Aishwarya Nair in Mumbai; Writing by Nupur Anand; Editing by Euan Rocha, Robert Birsel, Gareth Jones and Alison Williams)