Cyclone Phailin: Riders on the storm

Phailin was still brewing in the North Andaman Sea around October 9 when Krishan Kumar was called in. The 2002-batch IAS officer and an MBBS doctor,Rohtak-born Kumar carries a reputation of being an upright officer who had efficiently controlled riots in Kandhamal triggered by the killing of VHP leader Laxmanananda Saraswati in 2008,when he was a district collector there.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and Chief Secretary J K Mohapatra,haunted by the memories of the 1999 super cyclone that had left nearly 10,000 dead,set a goal for “zero casualty” this time.

Kumar realised that it meant that major responsibility was upon him as Ganjam was to be the Ground Zero for a cyclone that was being projected by experts abroad as deadlier than the 1999 one and by even the most conservative estimates as a “severe” storm with the capacity to wreak havoc.

The state government decided that all people within 5 km of the Ganjam coastline would have to be evacuated. But Ganjam only had 15 proper cyclone shelters,capable of taking in not more than 15,000 people. Kumar identified 1,045 additional buildings several kilometres away from the coast where 4 lakh people could be accommodated.

“We mapped each such shelter and put either a local revenue inspector or village-level worker in charge so that there was no confusion about who had to go where,” says Kumar. Meetings with officials of 22 departments followed and individual responsibilities of each official were fixed. While the Fire Services staff,Rural Development Department and Public Works Department officials were given charge of clearing the roads,BSNL towers were given extra fuel so that they could keep communications running.

Kumar was given the command for the entire district,with the Army and National Disaster Response Force teams that had been deployed also taking orders from him. Unlike 1999,when even the Secretariat in Bhubaneswar hadn’t made provisions for back-up power,all major offices in Ganjam district including Kumar’s this time had gensets.

Though evacuation started October 11 afternoon,Kumar says that the clear skies and a relatively calm sea at the time made many people doubt their warnings. People were also unwilling to leave their homes unguarded. Kumar,accompanied by the Ganjam superintendent of police and other officials,drove along the 70-km-long coastline in the scope of the cyclone the entire night of October 11-12 to convince people to leave.

Still,by October 12 morning,with the cyclone hours away,only 80,000 people had been evacuated. This was when Kumar travelled with local MLAs and panchayat functionaries telling people sternly to “leave or perish”. By October 12 evening,a record 1.8 lakh had been evacuated to the specially created 1,060 cyclone shelters while another 1.6 lakh had moved on their own. In the entire state,a record 9 lakh people were evacuated in 36 hours.

In Bada Aryapalli village on the coast,fisherman Chedipilli Hemant Kumar now thanks Kumar. “Had he not forced us to vacate our homes,we would have died,” he says.

But even the collector had no idea that Chhatrapur,where he works,would be the worst hit. Soon after the cyclone made landfall in Gopalpur at 9.20 pm,the roof over Kumar’s residence was blown away while a part of his office came crashing down. Kumar’s wife,also an IAS officer,is currently on deputation in Delhi. On the National Highway,vehicles were tossed around and mobile towers wrenched apart.

However,within 48 hours,90 per cent of the roads had been cleared in Ganjam. BSNL started working within a few hours.

On October 14,Kumar got a pat on the back from Chief Secretary Mohapatra. The United Nations and World Bank both praised the relief effort,and UN Secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction Margareta Wahlström said they would highlight it as a successful case study globally.

“In disaster situations,it is always better to be overprepared and work as a team. It’s also better to have single command of control to avoid confusion. But it is also important to not get bogged down and be alert,” he says.

It’s been six days since that night and there are complaints now over food material not reaching the affected. Shortage of labourers to load and unload the rice bags is proving to be a bottleneck.

Kumar knows he has at least six months of work ahead to put Ganjam back on its feet,considering that over 2.3 lakh houses have been damaged and electrical installations are damaged.

What keeps him going is what was achieved on October 12 night. The enormity of it only hit the next morning as he sat compiling the data,and realised that after over 12 hours of winds,including times when it peaked over 240 km,only 10 lives had been lost in Ganjam. The toll has now been revised to 13.

ASHISH KUMAR SINGH,33,

GANJAM SP

A day before Phailin struck,Superintendent of Police Ashish Kumar Singh was in pain as fluid had accumulated near the membrane of his lungs. As the 33-year-old officer from Uttar Pradesh drove into each of the coastal villages for the evacuation exercise,every breath he took was trying.

Tasked with moving more than 3.5 lakh people out of 400-odd villages along the 70-km-long coastline,Singh formed seven-eight teams under his command to fan out to every village. On October 11 and 12 he barely got a couple of hours of sleep each as after evacuating people,he had to also make sure they stayed put in the shelters.

Accompanied by Berhampur SP Anirudh Singh,he used persuasion,threats and finally intimidatory tactics. An elder in Sana Aryapalli,a village of fishermen near Gopalpur,told him irritatedly: “Have you even seen a batya (cyclone)? We have been going 15 km into the sea for years.”

By the evening of October 11,doctors had advised Singh to get hospitalised for the pain in his lungs and even his senior officials told him to take leave. “It would be an insult to me,” replied Singh,who got a pharmacist with the Police Department to give him antibiotics injections on his right hand every six hours. “By 11th,anything that rolled on Ganjam roads and did not belong to the state government had been seized for evacuation,” he says.

They even roped in bootleggers and small-time criminals they knew for help,Singh chuckles.

Still,by October 12 morning,only 25 per cent of the people of Agasti Nuagaon village,which was to be among the worst affected,had been shifted,while 30 people in Sana Aryapalli and another 45 in Haripur village stuck on at home. “Then we started arresting them under Section 309 of the IPC,under which we can prevent people from committing suicide,” says Singh.

By 3 pm that day,the evacuation had been completed. “The SP searched every corner of our village with a torchlight to ensure no one was left,” recalls Jagadananda Behera of Haripur.

Later,as Phailin raged over Chhatrapur,Singh stayed awake in his office the entire night. The asbestos roof at their residence blown away,Singh’s terrified wife and two children would spend the night in the toilet.

By 3.30 am,Phailin had weakened but was still howling at around 150 km an hour. Singh told himself that “toofan ho ya toofani (big storm or small)”,he couldn’t stay in his office any longer. Putting on a raincoat,he went to check on his family and was relieved to find them safe. His heart sank though when he saw only about 30 of the hundreds of trees in his quarters still standing. Minutes later,policemen started clearing the fallen trees to make their way to the Collectorate where Krishan Kumar waited,prepared to hear the worst.

After some quick words,both Kumar and Singh moved out to clear the roads.

The memory of that night will stay with him,he says. “I expected at least 2,000 deaths in at least two coastal blocks. Had that happened,I would never have been able to pardon myself.”

When he first heard him discussing Phailin,Singh remembers,his four-year-old son told him: “Dad,mein cyclone ko bandh doonga (Dad,I’ll tie up the cyclone).” They did their best,he thinks.

RAMA CHANDRA BEHERA,43,

PRESIDENT,HARIPUR PRIMARY FISHERMEN COOPERATIVE SOCIETY

When Chamakhandi police station personnel came knocking at Behera’s residence on October 10 requesting his help to convince the 500-odd families of his native village to shift to the cyclone shelter,he was busy putting up a Durga Puja pandal. But then a policeman pointed out the striking similarities between the 1999 super cyclone and Phailin. On October 17,1999,a cyclone had ripped through Ganjam coast on Mahaashtami Day.

After that,it was Behera and his friends in the village as well as members of the cooperative society who took the lead in sending off people to the shelter. “Some said nothing would happen as they had seen the 1999 cyclone. A lot of my neighbours got angry. We told them that in New Orleans,warning signal No. 7 was hoisted when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. But in Gopalpur,No. 10 warning signal was hoisted,” says Behera.

On October 11 morning fisherman Ishwar Behera lost his boat to the waves at Chilika mouth.

Rama Chandra Behera was helped by retired schoolteacher Nabaghana Behera and local youth Dilip Behera in finally convincing the locals to move.  The villagers were initially kept at the local shelter,but later sent to a building in Chhatrapur town,10 km away. To persuade the villagers,Behera and 20-odd youths stayed in the cyclone shelter to keep an eye on their belongings on October 12 night.

At 11.20 pm,with the asbestos roofs in the village flying,Behera and his friends helped rescue four families who had somehow managed to evade the officials. The entire night,Behera says,they prayed. By dawn,the cyclone had weakened but the sea had already claimed his mechanised fishing boat,net and ravaged his home. They are thankful though for their saved lives.

“From now on,we will never disbelieve government warnings of a cyclone,” he says.

GOPALPUR LIGHTHOUSE STAFF,

RATAN SINGH YADAV,48; NAKUL NAYAK,40

Five hours before Phailin struck,Ratan Singh Yadav,the 48-year-old head light keeper of Gopalpur port,had ensured that he,his wife Santoshi and teenage daughter Monica were safe inside the 45-metre-tall lighthouse. Lighthouse attendant Nakul Nayak,wife Sita,daughters Rupa and Sanu and a junior engineer from Cochin,G K Pramod,had also locked themselves inside.

By the time Phailin made landfall,eight of them were the only people left at Gopalpur as the district administration had forcefully evacuated all the others.

The 141-year-old lighthouse sends signal from a radar fitted atop it,light from its three 150-watt metal halide lamps picked up by ships sailing between the Rangoon and Coromandal coast ports. At night,ships within 50 km of Gopalpur can see the white light flash every five seconds.

That evening,Yadav told his daughter to get Santoshi to sleep early. His wife has a psychiatric disorder and he feared she would not be able to cope well.

Eventually,he suffered as much. Soon after Phailin made landfall at Gopalpur,waves started rising as high as 15 feet. The winds were so strong that the glass panes on the lighthouse window started cracking. “I thought my eardrums would burst. I stuffed cotton in my ears. We sat on the ground floor wondering what would happen next,” says Yadav. A beehive near the windowsill was battered,he remembers.

“We were so shocked that we forgot to have our dinner. I almost broke down,” says Sita Nayak.

At 10.20 am the next day,suddenly the wind stopped and the sky became clear as the eye of the cyclone passed. Pramod walked out of the lighthouse to survey the beach,but just 15 minutes later,the cyclone was again in full fury,beating down on the stone walls.

However,the men knew they couldn’t leave their posts. Through the full fury of the storm,they ensured that the halide lamps kept sending out the signal,even after one of the glass panels covering them developed cracks while the solar panel on top was blown away.

Pramod,who had come to Gopalpur on October 2 only for maintenance work,had with him at least six mobile SIM cards and managed to keep in touch with his friends in India and abroad throughout the night.

Impressed by the commitment of the Gopalpur lighthouse staff,Capt A M Surej,the director general of Lighthouses & Lightships,later praised them. Pramod says they were just doing their duty. “I am sure several ships picked up our signal that night,” he says.

M Mohapatra,48,

Head,Cyclone Warning Division,IMD,delhi

The tough call for the India Meteorological Department was not just picking the storm signs in time but also sticking to their claim that it wouldn’t become a super cyclone.

“We got the first warning signs on the morning of October 8,and by October 9,we said it was a cyclone storm,” Mohapatra says. Sitting in his office space,which he shares with six others,he remembers that he and his team worked round the clock for the next couple of days. “I would be in office by 6 am and stay till past 10 pm. Even later,I was constantly monitoring the situation.”

By October 11,they found themselves in the midst of another storm. “It was a very tense day. We did not predict it would be a super cyclone,but international agencies were forecasting it to be one,” Mohapatra says. On the evening of October 11,National Disaster Management Authority Vice-Chairman Shashidhar Reddy called him up to enquire why the IMD could be so confident,when all international bodies had painted a worrying picture.

A calm Mohapatra gave him three arguments and within minutes,Reddy was convinced.

The D-Day would dawn as hectic. “I came in at 6.30 in the morning on Saturday,but it didn’t matter what time I came in because I hadn’t slept at all the previous night,” Mohapatra recalls.

Past midnight on October 12,as Phailin stayed true to the IMD projections,a relieved Reddy sent a text message to Mohapatra congratulating him and his team. He has saved the text.

With the IMD since 1992 and with this division in Delhi for eight years now,Mohapatra says what he has learned is that warnings should be “simple and understandable”. “Forecasting is about both technology and management,” he adds. The days since have not been easy either. “The tension has gone but work remains… We have not rested,not taken a single day off,” he says.

Mohapatra adds that while he is proud of the IMD’s “most important success”,he isn’t surprised. “We have worked for this over the years,it is a trend of successes. And the end result is what is the most gratifying — minimising loss of human lives,” he says.

At the same time,he insists,it was a team effort. “We only gave the early and accurate warning… There are so many agencies,people involved who helped deal with the situation so effectively.”

with Ruhi Tewari in Delhi