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A policeman helps a public transport driver to cross a flooded street in Mumbai. Photo: ZUMA Wire/dpa

Cyclone Tauktae: India searches for missing dozens after storm sinks boats

  • The navy rescued 177 of the 400 people on the two barges that sank off Mumbai’s coast during the cyclone – the biggest to hit the region in decades
  • Cyclone Tauktae claimed lives in Kerala, Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat as winds lashed homes and uprooted trees and power lines
India
India’s navy is working to rescue crew members from a sunken barge and a second cargo vessel that was adrift on Tuesday off the coast of Mumbai after a deadly cyclone struck the western coast.

The navy said it has rescued 177 of the 400 people on the two barges in the Arabian Sea. Three warships, maritime patrol aircraft and helicopters joined the rescue operations and were scouring the sea, the navy said.

Both barges were working for Oil and Natural Gas Corp., the largest crude oil and natural gas company in India.

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Cyclone Tauktae, the most powerful storm to hit the region in more than two decades, packed sustained winds of up to 210 kilometres per hour when it came ashore in Gujarat state late on Monday. Four people were killed in the state, raising the storm’s total to 16.

Residents emerged from relief shelters on Tuesday to find debris strewn across roads, trees uprooted and electricity lines damaged. The coastguard rescued eight fishermen who were stranded at sea near Veraval, a fishing industry hub in Gujarat state.

In Maharashtra, six people were killed on Monday but the state’s capital, Mumbai, was largely spared from major damage even as heavy rains pounded the city’s coastline and high winds whipped its skyscrapers.

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Indian village offers Covid-19 patients alternative medicine treatment under tree

Indian village offers Covid-19 patients alternative medicine treatment under tree

Over the weekend, the cyclone killed six people in Kerala, Karnataka and Goa states as it moved along the western coast.

The cyclone has weakened, but the India Meteorological Department forecast heavy rainfall for many parts of Gujarat and Maharashtra in the coming days.

Ahead of the cyclone, about 150,000 people were evacuated from low-lying areas in Maharashtra and Gujarat states. S.N. Pradhan, director of India’s National Disaster Response Force, said social distancing norms were being followed in evacuation shelters and rescue teams were clearing debris from affected areas.

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Both states, already among the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, had scrambled disaster response teams, fearing the storm could endanger India’s fight against Covid-19, with supply lines cut, roads destroyed and lockdown measures slowing relief work.

“This cyclone is a terrible double blow for millions of people in India whose families have been struck down by record Covid infections and deaths,” said Udaya Regmi from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

One of the men rescued by the navy from the Arabian Sea being brought for medical attention at a naval air station in Mumbai. Photo: Indian Navy via AP

Tropical cyclones are less common in the Arabian Sea than on India’s east coast and usually form later in the year.

Last May, more than 110 people died after “super cyclone” Amphan ravaged eastern India and Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal.

The Arabian Sea previously experienced fewer severe cyclones than the Bay of Bengal but rising water temperatures because of global warming was changing that, said Roxy Mathew Koll from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

“[The] Arabian Sea is one of the fastest-warming basins across the global oceans,” he said.

Cyclone Tauktae adds to woes of coronavirus-hit India

The effects were felt far and wide with authorities in Nepal, some 2,000km from Gujarat, advising climbers on Everest and other mountains to stay put.

But more than 200 climbers ignored the warnings and were heading up Everest, eyeing for the summit end of this week, a government official at the base camp said.

“I had already decided to wait for summit after the 24th because the jet wind was in our region. Now the cyclone is also bringing moisture and possibly snow with it,” said Dawa Steven Sherpa of expedition organiser Asian Trekking.

The cyclone was expected to bring substantial rains as far away as Delhi, more than 1,200km from the Gujarat coast and to Uttarakhand on the Himalayan border with Tibet.

Additional Reporting by Agence France-Presse

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