NEW DELHI (AP) – Cyclone Fani touched land on the East coast of India on Friday as a storm of category 5, downloading intense rainfall over the beaches and with gusts of wind of up to 205 kilometers (127 miles) per hour. Considered ‘extremely severe’ by the Indian Meteorological Service, the cyclone made landfall in the coastal State of Odisha, in the Bay of Bengal, around 08:00 hours and planned that will weaken to storm “very severe” as it moves towards North-Northeast towards the State of Bengal Occidental.En Bhubaneswar, a city of Odisha famous for its 11th-century hindu Temple, Palm trees waved from one side to another in a sky obscured by rain. The national road to Puri, a popular seaside tourist destination, was filled with trees and fallen electric poles who left it unworkable. On the eve a special three is prepared to evacuate tourists from the city. The airport in Calcutta, the capital of West Bengal, closed at 15:00 on Friday and will not reopen its doors until Saturday morning. At least 200 journeys by train were cancelled across the country. On the scale of cyclone in India, Fani occupies the second most serious level, which is equivalent to a category 3 hurricane. “In 1999, a”super”Cyclone killed around 10,000 people and devastated much of Odisha with winds of between 260 and 280 km/h (between 161 and 173 mph), according to M. Mohapatra, the weather service scientist.” This is not so bad”, he said.
About 1.2 million people were evacuated from lowlands in Odisha and taken to some 4,000 shelters, said the national disaster response force.
In the State of Andhra Pradesh, just south of Odisha, Fani toppled electric poles and trees. In the Srikakulam district, where authorities evicted to approximately 20,000 people, with thatched houses collapsed and fishing boats that were untied on the beaches were made pieces.
