Two of India biggest ports – Mundra and Kandla – are in the Gulf of Kutch, while the Jamnagar refinery, the world’s biggest oil refinery complex owned by Reliance Industries, is based in Saurashtra
Ahmedabad:
A storm off India’s west coast has strengthened to become a powerful cyclone, which could hit India’s western state of Gujarat and southern parts of Pakistan this week, the weather department said.
The cyclone, named Biparjoy, is expected to make landfall on Thursday afternoon between Mandvi in Gujarat and Karachi in Pakistan with a maximum sustained wind speed of 125-135 km per hour, gusting up to 150 km per hour, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Monday.
The weather office has advised fishing communities to halt operations and the evacuation of people from the coastal areas of Saurashtra and Kutch regions of Gujarat.
Two of India biggest ports – Mundra and Kandla – are in the Gulf of Kutch, while the Jamnagar refinery, the world’s biggest oil refinery complex owned by Reliance Industries, is based in Saurashtra.
Authorities have moved 7,500 people to safer places and put in place an elaborate evacuation plan in Gujarat
In New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi directed officials to ensure safe evacuation of people living in vulnerable locations in the path of the cyclone that was likely to make landfall on Thursday afternoon and will be preceded by extremely heavy rainfall.
The PM chaired a high-level meeting to review the preparedness of the Centre as well as the Gujarat government to deal with the situation arising out of the impending cyclone.
Seven teams of India’s National Disaster Response Force and 12 teams of State Disaster Response Force have been deployed in the districts likely to be affected by the storm, Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel said in a Tweet.
Nearly a dozen districts in coastal Gujarat would be affected by heavy rainfall and gusting winds, although some of the districts are sparsely populated, which would limit the damage, said a weather office official, who declined to be named.
More than 3,000 people were evacuated from 31 villages in Porbandar, while in Devbhumi Dwarka, more than 1,500 people were shifted to safer places, they informed.
”Some 3,000 people, especially fishermen and labourers working at a port, were shifted in Kandla. Residents of some slums near the sea have also been moved in Mandvi.
Around 23,000 people residing in villages within a radius of 10 km from the coast will be moved to (makeshift) shelter homes from Tuesday,” Kutch collector Amit Arora said.
Modi directed to ensure maintenance of all essential services such as power, telecommunications, health and drinking water, and restore them immediately in the event of any damage caused to them. The PM also directed that the safety of animals should be ensured and ordered the setting up of 24×7 control rooms.
The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has pre-positioned 12 teams, which are equipped with boats, tree-cutters and telecom equipment, and has kept 15 teams on standby, the PMO said.
The met department said the cyclone was very likely to move nearly northwards till the morning of June 14.
The Centre has directed the state government to regulate onshore and offshore activities and mobilise evacuation from coastal areas of Saurashtra and Kutch from districts including Kutch, Devbhumi Dwarka, Porbandar, Jamnagar, Rajkot, Junagadh and Morbi.
The IMD has warned of heavy to very heavy rainfall at a few places with isolated extremely heavy rainfall in the districts of Kutch, Devbhumi Dwarka and Jamnagar on June 15.
In view of the impending cyclone, the NDRF has deployed two additional teams in Mumbai as a precautionary measure, an official said on Monday.
The NDRF teams, in addition to three already deployed in the metropolis, have been stationed at Andheri and Kanjurmarg areas in the western and eastern suburbs, respectively, he said.
A 1998 cyclone killed at least 4,000 people and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage in Gujarat.
Biparjoy delayed the onset of the annual monsoon over the southern state of Kerala, but now conditions are favourable for the progress of much-needed rains in some more parts of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu states, the weather office said.