Cyclone Fani and the loot after: Eight days after the cyclonic storm Fani killed as many as 40 people and left a trail of destruction along the coast in Odisha, people are still living in constant fear amid rumours of another cyclonic storm. Fani, which made landfall in Puri on May 3, has shaken but not broken the morale of the 14 million people who live in the state’s densely populated coastal districts. However, life isn’t the same as it was 8 days ago.
Odisha has come to a standstill because electricity is not still back in most of the cyclone-hit areas. Generator operators are making a killing in Puri, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Jagatsinghpur and Kendrapara by charging anything between Rs 800-1000 for 30 minutes. Half an hour’s power to run pumps for water, run the fridge, every power-enabled amenity, costs a thousand rupees!
Residents have no other way than hiring a diesel generator since they are used to drawing water from borewells to fill their rooftop water tanks, charge mobile phones and run fans. Only the middle-class can afford to hire power generators at Rs 2500 an hour while the poor and the homeless rot in polythene make-shift houses. For them, the availability of electricity and clean drinking water is a distant dream. Forget power, the relief materials distributed by government agencies have not reached affected districts yet.
Due to the high demand for generators and an acute shortage of fuel, diesel price has also skyrocketed and costs Rs 200 per litre when it sells under Rs 70 in New Delhi. Similarly, vendors are charging an exorbitant price for any commodity and have ganged up to create an artificial scarcity in the state.
Even vegetables are not within the reach of the common man and a candle that normally sells for Rs 5 is being sold at Rs 12-15.
Lack of power (electricity) and telecom connectivity has paralysed life while a few ATMs, which rely solely on portable power generators, are working leading to serpentine queues for a long duration of time reminiscent of the period after Demonetisation in November 2016.
The ruthless cyclone has destroyed the beautiful Chilika lake. The ecological hotspot, which is known as Asia’s biggest brackish water lake, has four more mouths now. Earlier, it had only two mouths. The four mouths will increase the inflow of saline water from the sea and will ruin Chilika’s marine life, which is different from the sea ecosystem.
The Balukhand-Konark wildlife sanctuary on the Puri-Konark marine drive has been reduced to barren land after the cyclone uprooted more than 4.5 million trees. The ecological hotspot had over 4,000 spotted deer, a large number of wolves, monitor lizards and was regularly visited by the rare Olive Ridley turtles for nesting.
Similarly, Bhubaneswar’s Nandankanan Zoological Park has witnessed large-scale devastation. Animal enclosures have been destroyed due to the uprooting of hundreds of trees.
The storm uprooted as many as 1.56 lakh electric poles and damaged two 400 KV towers, 19 132 KV towers, 200 33/11 KV poles, over 10,000 11/0.4 transformers and dozens of high-tension lines.
US space agency NASA shared images showing where the lights went out in Bhubaneswar city which is one of the worst affected areas in the state after Cyclone Fani.
The UN agency for disaster reduction praised the Indian Meteorological Department for its almost pinpoint accuracy of early warning and Odisha government’s rapid evacuation response to Cyclone Fani. With the help of 45,000 volunteers, the government of Odisha evacuated a record of 1.2 million people in just 24 hours — 3.2 lakh from Ganjam, 1.3 lakh from Puri and set up almost 7,000 kitchens catering to 9,000 shelters that came online overnight.
The people of Odisha may have weathered the fury of Fani but human greed and hoarding will not let the disaster-hit people be. Odisha cries for help!
