Wind, rain pound India as massive cyclone hits; Half a million evacuated

Cyclone Phailin is expected to be the biggest storm in the region for 14 years

An immense, powerful cyclone that lashed the eastern Indian coast, forcing 500,000 people to evacuate and causing widespread damage, weakened Sunday after making landfall.

Five people died in the rains that fell ahead of the storm, most killed by falling branches, Indian media reported, but the situation on the ground in many areas was still unclear Sunday morning after Cyclone Phailin made landfall the previous evening in Orissa state, and power and communications lines were down in coastal districts.

Cyclone Phailin caused one of the largest evacuation operations in Indian history, with 500,000 people moved to higher ground in the coastal state of Odisha, which is expected to bear the brunt of the storm. The storm, which made landfall early Saturday night near the town of Golpalpur in Odisha state, was expected to cause large-scale power and communications outages and shut down road and rail links, officials said. It’s also expected to cause extensive damage to crops.

Men try to remove fallen trees from road due to rain
in Odisha

Officials in both Odisha and Andhra Pradesh have been stockpiling emergency food supplies and setting up shelters. The Indian military has put some of its forces on alert, and has trucks, transport planes and helicopters at the ready for relief operations. Roads were all but empty Saturday as high waves pounded the coastline of Odisha state. Seawater pushed inland, swamping villages where many people survive as subsistence farmers in mud and thatch huts.

Around 500,000 left their homes for storm shelters

Hurricanes typically lose much of their force when they hit land, where there is less heat-trapping moisture feeding energy into the storm.

By Friday evening, some 420,000 people had been moved to higher ground or shelters in Odisha, and 100,000 more in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, said Indian Home Secretary Anil Goswami.

Meanwhile, the US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Centre predicted that Phailin could produce gusts of up to 296km/h (184 mph), while the London-based Tropical Storm Risk classified Phailin as a Category Five storm - the most powerful. Satellite images showed the cyclone filling nearly the entire Bay of Bengal, an area larger than France that has seen the majority of the world's worst recorded storms, including a 1999 cyclone that killed 10,000.

A big wave smashes into a breakwater at a fishing harbour in Jalaripeta in the Visakhapatnam disrict, AP