Cyclone 'Phailin' on Sunday left a trail of destruction, hitting nearly 90 lakh people, damaging lakhs of houses and laying waste paddy crop worth about Rs 2,400 crore, mainly in coastal Ganjam district, but Odisha and Andhra Pradesh escaped widespread loss of lives.
Communication links have been vastly disrupted by the strong winds that went upto a speed of 220 kmph when the very severe cyclonic storm, feared to be the worst in 14 years, crossed the coast near Gopalpur on Saturday night and weakened towards becoming a depression.
Authorities in the state evacuated nearly nine lakh people, the largest in recent history, ahead of the storm to cyclone shelters and public buildings like schools to avoid a repeat of the disastrous 1999 super cyclone that had left 9,885 people dead.
"We are on the whole quite satisfied with the type of evacuation that was done," Vice Chairman of National Disaster Management Authority M Shashidhar Reddy said.
In Gopalpur, where the storm struck first, "almost 90-95 per cent people had been evacuated".
Defence and paramilitary personnel were deployed to carry out relief and rehabilitation measures and restoring infrastructure badly affected by the storm.
Seven people were killed in Odisha before the cyclone made the landfall on Saturday night due to fall of trees while one person was killed in Andhra Pradesh in a house collapse in Srikakulam district.
The IMD said in New Delhi that Phailin has weakened into a cyclonic storm with wind speed between 60 and 70 kmph.
It is currently close to Jharsuguda in north Odisha.
Ahead of the storm, there were fears that casualties could be heavy with predictions by US Navy that the storm could reach a speed of 300 kmph but the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) on Sunday said it stood vindicated by its forecasts.
The IMD had throughout maintained that the current storm was a "very severe cyclone" which will pack a speed of 200 to 220 kmph and not a super cyclone.
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