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With Mass Evacuations, India Braces as Powerful Cyclone Heads for Coast 800,000 Evacuated as Powerful Cyclone Hits India
(about 4 hours later)
NEW DELHI — A cyclone that may be among the most powerful storms ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal bore down on the eastern coast of India on Saturday with heavy rains and high winds. NEW DELHI — A massive cyclone came ashore along the eastern coast of India about 9 p.m. Saturday, flooding homes throughout the region and leading to the evacuations of more than 800,000 people, one of the largest such evacuations in India’s history.
Indian authorities described the storm, named Phailin, as “very severe” with sustained winds of 136 miles per hour and gusts reaching nearly 150 m.p.h. The storm’s maximum sustained winds were about 124 miles per hour with gusts reaching 150 m.p.h., according to Indian officials. At least five people were killed in the coastal city of Gopalpur because of heavy rain and high winds before the storm made landfall, officials said. The storm was expected to drop up to 10 inches of rain over the next two days in some areas.
Some 440,000 people have already been evacuated from the path of the storm, M. Shashidhar Reddy, vice chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority, said at a news conference in New Delhi on Saturday afternoon. The Indian predictions before the storm made landfall were less alarming than those from meteorological authorities in the United States. Late Friday, the United States Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said the storm, then barreling across the Bay of Bengal, had maximum sustained winds of 161 m.p.h., with gusts reaching 196 m.p.h. — making it similar to a Category 5 hurricane, the most severe.
The Indian predictions before the storm made landfall were less alarming than those from meteorological authorities in the United States. Late Friday, the United States Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said that the storm had sustained winds of 161 m.p.h., with gusts reaching 196 m.p.h. — making it similar to a Category 5 hurricane, the most severe. American meteorological authorities have appeared on Indian TV channels and have almost universally sounded more concerned about the coming storm than their Indian counterparts. But once the storm arrived on land, its intensity was more modest, and Indian officials defended their more measured forecast as having been more accurate.
“If it’s not a record, it’s really, really close,” a University of Miami hurricane researcher, Brian McNoldy, told The Associated Press. “You really don’t get storms stronger than this anywhere in the world ever. This is the top of the barrel.” “We are not trying to downplay the intensity of the cyclone,” M. Shashidhar Reddy, vice chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority, said at a news conference Saturday. “In fact, U.S. authorities are overplaying it.”
Compared with devastating American storms, Mr. McNoldy said that Phailin was nearly the size of Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,200 people in 2005 and caused devastating flooding in New Orleans, and that it had the wind power of 1992’s Hurricane Andrew, which packed 165-m.p.h. winds at landfall in Miami. On Saturday, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, in Hawaii, reduced its estimates, saying they showed maximum sustained winds of about 138 m.p.h. and gusts of up to 167 m.p.h.
Cyclones that form in the Bay of Bengal are known not only for their intensity but also for their deadliness. The bay forms a funnel that pushes the storms onto land that has long been among the most densely populated and poorest in the world. L. S. Rathore, director general of the India Meteorological Department, termed the storm, named Cyclone Phailin, a “very serious cyclonic storm.” By Sunday, Mr. Reddy said, the storm is likely to be downgraded to a “serious cyclonic storm.”
Odisha, with nearly 42 million people, is one of India’s poorest states, and its largely agricultural population could be devastated by the storm. Still, the true scope of natural disasters in India is often not known for days, given its large population and fairly weak central government.
Indian authorities predicted a storm surge as high as 10 feet, enough to inundate low-lying areas in the states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, both of which lie southwest of the metropolis of Kolkata. Rainfall was expected to be heavy in some places, with as many as 10 inches of rain falling from Saturday to Monday, the India Meteorological Department said. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a statement Saturday that he had been briefed on preparations for the storm and had directed that the central government extend all needed assistance to state officials.
Forecasters predicted extensive damage to the region’s traditional wood and bamboo houses, serious crop losses and the disruption of rail and road traffic because of extensive flooding. In the Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh State, many mud homes and farms were destroyed, and uprooted trees blocked roads, according to officials there. About 30,000 people were evacuated from coastal villages in Andhra Pradesh.
Officials ordered hundreds of thousands of villagers to leave their homes and take shelter in safer buildings. Tourists were evacuated from hotels in the region. K. Baliah, a district official involved in rescue efforts, said coastal residents were reluctant to leave until they saw sea levels rise. “At first they refused to leave their properties,” he said. Then, “when the water started to enter their communities around 2 p.m., the people decided themselves that they must leave.”
The storm is likely to be the strongest one to hit India in at least 14 years. It comes during a strike in Andhra Pradesh by government workers, who shut down much of the state’s electrical grid last week. After hearing a plea from the state’s chief minister, workers agreed to restore power to much of Andhra Pradesh on Friday. Andhra Pradesh has a population of 82 million, and any major disruptions could have huge consequences. The surge accompanying the storm is expected to reach nearly 10 feet, weather officials said, which would cause heavy flooding across Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, another coastal state.

Malavika Vyawahare contributed reporting.

A. K. Antony, India’s defense minister, said service members from the country’s army, air force and navy had been deployed to help in rescue and relief operations.
He said the air force had deployed C-130 aircraft, recently purchased from the United States, to help in the efforts, and the Navy had multiple diving teams with inflatable rafts deployed at important locations. Military helicopters are also available for rescues, he said.
Pentayya Chintakayala, 33, a fisherman from a village near the port city of Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, said the fishermen of his village had stopped fishing and moved their boats inland, but they were concerned that they could lose everything if the storm was as severe as predicted.
“What they tell us on television and what we see in the waves have nothing to do with each other,” he said. “Fishermen don’t always listen to the warnings, and 90 percent of the time that’s O.K., but 10 percent of the time the warnings are true, and we lose everything because we don’t believe them. Fishermen are stubborn like that.”
Mr. Chintakayala added that it was difficult to store fishing equipment very far inland, “because the boats are heavy and there isn’t much place to store them.”
Officials in the Visakhapatnam district were able to evacuate 21,500 people to relief camps by Saturday evening, including 3,500 inhabitants of flood-prone slums in the city of Visakhapatnam. But they said that they had often resorted to force, and that 30,000 more might have to be evacuated if the worst predictions come to pass.
“Basically the people are not willing to come to the shelters, because they are worried that they will lose their belongings,” said M. Venkateswarao, the district revenue officer. “They say that nothing bad will happen and that we are unnecessarily forcing them. But even if one person dies, it will look very bad for the district administration.”

Malavika Vyawahare and Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi, and Vivekananda Nemana from Visakhapatnam, India.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 12, 2013Correction: October 12, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the contributor. She is  Malavika Vyawahare, not Malawahare.

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the contributor. She is  Malavika Vyawahare, not Malawahare.