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NEW DELHI – A powerful cyclone fell on Thursday in eastern India, cutting electricity, uprooting trees, destroying mud houses and killing at least eight people, announced officials.
The storm, Cyclone Titli, swept the Bay of Bengal before hitting the coastal states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, where the wind speed reached 150 km, nearly 95 miles, an hour when the storm hit landed early in the morning.
Social media videos showed heavy rains on communities close to the water and gusts of wind tearing through the tin roofs and pushing palms almost parallel to the ground.
In Odisha, rescue commissioner Bishnupada Sethi told reporters: "No causality has been reached in the mission."
But in neighboring Andhra Pradesh, authorities have reported the deaths of at least eight people, including a group of fishermen and two people in the coastal district of Srikakulam, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. It is unknown how many people were injured and it is too early to assess the cost of the damage.
Before the storm hit the ground, state governments evacuated several hundred thousand people and put them in more than 1,000 shelters. By the time cyclone Titli, the Hindi word for butterfly, hit the ground in India, half a million people access to electricity was lost, flights in the area were canceled and many schools were closed until the weekend.
"All hours are now crucial," said N. Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, during a teleconference with officials close to the coast.
The Indian Meteorological Service has described Hurricane Titli as a "very severe cyclonic storm", a designation for cyclones with a wind speed of 119 to 221 kilometers at the time. The storm is expected to weaken by the end of Thursday, as it will head north along the Indian coast.
Cyclones occur in the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. Similar violent storms in the Atlantic and northeastern Pacific are called hurricanes.
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Last year, a cyclone killed dozens of fishermen in southwestern India. When the storm weakened, members of the fishing sector staged demonstrations along the coast, claiming that the government had taken a long time to reach people at sea or warn them of the passage of the sea. cyclone.
Mr Sethi, Odisha's emergency commissioner, said that this was not the case with Cyclone Titli on Thursday. "It was a complex operation," he said of the preparations and the response to the storm.
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