Cyclone Phailin batters India
The massive storm is lashing India’s east coast with gusts of more than 150mph. The threat of a storm surge is driving hundreds of thousands of people inland.
The eye of the storm collapsed just a few hours before Phailin hit the coastline of Orissa state, spreading the hurricane force winds out over a larger area.
Jeff Masters, meteorology director at US forecaster Weather Underground, said: “It’s probably a bad thing it was doing this when it made landfall. Much of the housing in India is unable to withstand even a much weaker hurricane.
“This is a remarkably strong storm. It’s going to carry hurricane-force winds inland for about 12 hours, which is quite unusual.”
Estimates of the storm’s power have dropped slightly, but the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Hawaii predicts maximum sustained winds of about 138mph and gusts up to 167 mph.
Storm surge
The 1999 Orissa cyclone, which was similar in strength to Phailin but smaller, killed 10,000 people. That cyclone generated a 5.9m storm surge – usually the big killer in tropical storms.
Several US experts think Phailin could send a wall of water as high as 9m crashing inland, three times higher than the official estimates of the Indian Meteorological Department.
The Indian government said some 12 million people would be affected by the storm and at least 520,000 people have been evacuated to higher ground.
Officials in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh have been stockpiling emergency food supplies and setting up shelters for evacuees.
The Indian military has put some of its forces on alert, and has trucks, transport planes and helicopters on standby ready for relief operations.
Orissa’s chief minister Naveen Patnaik said: “I request everyone to not panic. Please assist the government. Everyone from the village to the state headquarters have been put on alert,” he told reporters.
Surya Narayan Patro, the state’s top disaster management official, had said that “no one will be allowed to stay in mud and thatched houses in the coastal areas” when the storm hits.
By Saturday afternoon, the sea had already pushed inland as much as 40 metres along parts of the coastline.
There are fears that a storm of this unusual size could cause large-scale power and communications outages, close road and rail links and cause extensive damage to crops.
University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy said: “You really don’t get storms stronger than this anywhere in the world ever. If it’s not a record, it’s really, really close.”
He said Phailin is nearly the size of Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,200 people in 2005 and caused devastating flooding in New Orleans.