Cyclone Biparjoy lash Saurashtra and Kutch, moves towards south Rajasthan

Ahmedabad/Kutch/New Delhi: As cyclone Biparjoy weakened and moved towards south Rajasthan on Friday after ravaging the Kutch and Saurashtra regions, the Gujarat government is facing the immediate challenge of restoring electricity in some 1,000 villages and clearing roads of fallen trees.

While the cyclone weakened after making landfall on the Kutch coast of Gujarat on Thursday evening, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said that north Gujarat should brace for heavy rainfall.

There was no loss of life on account of cyclone Biparjoy (which means calamity in Bengali) in Gujarat, the government said. Advance planning and mass evacuation of over one lakh persons helped the state achieve "zero casualties", chief minister Bhupendra Patel said in a press release.

To restore electricity, 1,127 teams are working in the districts of Kutch, Devbhumi Dwarka, Jamnagar, Morbi, Junagadh, Gir Somnath, Rajkot and Porbandar, said the release, adding that the forest department teams removed 581 fallen trees from the roads.

Talking to reporters in Delhi, NDRF director-general Atul Karwal said that of the 1,000 villages facing electricity disruptions in the state, 40 per cent were in Kutch district alone. He added that six teams of the NDRF have been deployed for relief and rescue operations in Kutch district.

The cyclone is now headed towards south Rajasthan and the NDRF has already positioned a team in Jalore as heavy rains may lead to flooding, the NDRF director-general said.

Commissioner of relief Alok Kumar Pandey had said earlier that not a single person died due to any incident linked to the cyclone in the state, calling it the government's "biggest achievement."

Among the 1,09,000 persons shifted from coastal areas to temporary shelters, there were 10,918 children, 5,070 senior citizens and 1,152 pregnant women, the government release said.

The cyclone made landfall along the Saurashtra-Kutch coasts near Jakhau around 6.30 pm on Thursday, bringing incessant rain and wind speeds as high as 140 kmph.

The landfall was over by 2.30 am on Friday and several parts of Kutch as well as Devbhumi Dwarka, Jamnagar, Rajkot and Morbi districts in Saurashtra regions were battered with heavy rainfall of 100–185 mm on Friday, accompanied by strong winds of up to 95 kmph, the state emergency operation centre (SEOC) said.

In all, 175 talukas of the state received some amount of rainfall during the day, it said.
The storm caused extensive financial loss to the state power utility Paschim Gujarat Vij Company Limited, with 5,120 electricity poles getting damaged, Mr Pandey said.

As many as 4,600 villages were left without power, but electricity supply was restored in 3,580 villages, he added.

At least 23 people were injured due to cyclone-related incidents and many houses were also damaged, he said.

Asked about a cattle-rearer duo of father and son dying on Thursday while trying to save their goats stuck in a flooded ravine in Bhavnagar district, Mr Pandey said that since the district was not cyclone-affected, their deaths were not counted as cyclone-related.

"Three state highways were closed as they suffered damage... A total of 581 trees were uprooted, as per reports. Nine pucca and 20 kutcha houses collapsed and two pucca and 474 kutcha houses suffered partial damage," he said.

Sixty-five thatched houses were destroyed and the government was preparing an order for immediate payment of compensation to those who have suffered losses, the official added.

Several low-lying areas of the coastal districts were inundated because of a storm surge, with tides going up to eight metres during the landfall.

On the Mandvi-Jakhau highway, fallen trees and electric poles could be seen every 100 or 200 metres. In the Kacha village near Mandvi, around 25 kutcha houses were damaged. "We have not had electricity since yesterday. But no untoward incident has taken place in the village," sarpanch of Kacha Rakesh Gaur said.

"In our shelter homes, we have housed 400 people from Salaya and other villages on the coast for the last four days," he added.

In Mandvi town, around 30 trees and 20 electric poles were uprooted. "We have not had electricity since 4 pm yesterday. The thatched roofs of our houses were blown away and the houses were inundated with water," said Mandvi resident Abdul Hussain.

Severe Cyclone Storm Biparjoy weakened into a Cyclonic Storm on Friday and was seen as gradually weakening into a deep depression, the IMD said.

With the cyclone moving further inland, authorities in the north Gujarat districts of Banaskantha and Patan were bracing for its impact by shifting people in low-lying areas to shelters.

The IMD forecast heavy to very heavy rainfall, with isolated extremely heavy rainfall in Jamnagar, Devbhumi Dwarka, Morbi and Kutch till Saturday morning.

Banaskantha and Patan districts were also likely to receive heavy to very heavy with isolated extremely heavy rainfall till Sunday morning, director of Ahmedabad centre of IMD Manorama Mohanty said.

Gujarat also experienced strong surface winds of up to 35–45 kmph, gusting to 55 kmph on Friday. North Gujarat districts such as Banaskantha, Patan, Mehsana and Sabarkantha received a strong surface wind of 65–75 kmph gusting to 85 kmph.

Banaskantha collector Varun Baranwal said that more than 2,500 people have been relocated to safe places and more people from low-lying areas were being evacuated.
Parts of Jamnagar, Kutch, Devbhumi Dwarka, Rajkot, and Morbi received heavy rainfall in six hours since Friday morning, data provided by the SEOC showed.

As many as 709 pregnant women who were ferried to hospitals from affected areas amid the raging storm gave birth to babies. Two of the babies were born in the state government's '108' ambulances, officials said.