Five years ago, the Naveen Patnaik government in Odisha won high praise in the form of a citation by the UN Secretary General for Disaster Preparedness, for keeping human casualties caused by Cyclone Phailin to a minimum (21).
Since then ‘zero casualty’ became the Odisha government’s claim to fame.
But Cyclone ‘Titli’ that hit the state on 11 October 2018, blew away that claim and threw it into the Bay of Bengal.
As before, including during Cyclone Hudhud in 2014, ‘zero casualty’ figured prominently in preparatory meetings and media briefings this time too. Even two days after the cyclone struck, the government kept claiming that ‘no one’ had died in the cyclone. A fortnight down the line however, it has been compelled to admit 74 deaths, a majority of them in the worst-hit Gajapati district, with the possibility of the numbers increasing not ruled out.
A Stain on Odisha Govt’s Impeccable Record
Clearly, the government has got it all wrong this time. The fact that the government was ‘in the dark’ about such a large number of deaths even 48 hours after the disaster struck is shocking.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, its claim that 3.6 lakh people had been evacuated from the coast ahead of Titli was proven false later, not by any outsider, but by themselves. While the aggregated figure of the number of people evacuated released by the office of the Special Relief Commissioner was 3.6 lakh, the district-wise break up added up to no more than 1.13 lakh.
More embarrassment was waiting for the state government in the days after the cyclone. Villagers of Baraghar, a remote, hilly village in Gajapati district that lost as many as 18 people – claimed that they had no information about the cyclone before it struck. When their roofs were blown away by the strong wind, they had rushed to a cave in the nearby hill for shelter. To their misfortune, the cave caved in under the impact of the heavy rains triggered by the cyclone. Many of them were crushed under the debris while others were swept away by the slush.
What Went Wrong?
Special Relief Commissioner Dr Bishnupada Sethi made a feeble attempt to contradict the villagers, claiming that government officials had reached the village ahead of the cyclone and ‘advised’ them to move to a safer place. While 68 families moved out, seven did not. And all the deceased belonged to these seven families, he pointed out.
Even assuming that the SRC’s claims are true, the contrast between the government’s handling of Cyclone Phailin in 2013 and its handling (or lack thereof) of Titli, could not be more stark. In 2013, in evacuating over nine lakh people living along the southern coast, the government did not allow anyone – not even the fishermen families which refused to budge – the option of staying put. In fact, the police had to be pressed into action at many places to mobilize people. However this time, no one in the government, including the SRC, has so far explained why the same was not done during Titli.
Govt Complacency
The truth is while the government was busy focusing on the long coast, it had not bargained for the heavy rains that lashed the hilly interiors of Ganjam, Gajapati and Rayagada districts. Since many of the places that received the maximum rains are remote, inaccessible areas without electricity, they were caught completely off-guard and had nowhere to go when disaster struck.
Reliable sources in the government say Collectors of the southern districts led the mandarins in the State Secretariat up the garden path and convinced them that the situation was well under control during a review meeting through video conference around noon, on the day the cyclone struck early in the morning. The government’s claim of ‘zero casualty’ was based on the word of the Collectors, who clearly failed to rise to the occasion this time, unlike in 2013.
This being said, it will be unfair to ignore all the good work the government has done with regard to disaster-preparedness and management, since the Super Cyclone on 29 October 1999. The worst-ever natural disaster in the state’s history, which had wiped out close to 10, 000 lives and devastated as many as 14 of the state’s 30 districts, had also swept away the Congress government, bringing in the BJD-BJP alliance into power in the state.
Odisha Govt’s Disaster Preparedness
The new government headed by Naveen Patnaik went about the mammoth task of reconstruction in right earnest, initiating a host of measures to limit the number of casualties in the future. One of the first such measures was the formation of the Odisha State Disaster Mitigation (now Management) Authority (OSDMA), the first dedicated agency to combat disasters anywhere in the country.
This was followed by the raising of Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force (ODRAF), a dedicated force with the required skills and equipment to undertake rescue and reconstruction measures during, and after disasters. The agency received high praise for its work during the recent floods in Kerala. In place of the handful of cyclone shelters that existed before the Super Cyclone, Odisha now boasts of as many as 836 of them, all along its 480-km long coast. If not No. 1, Odisha is certainly among the best-prepared states for such disasters.
The measures to face Titli were in place, but what was missing this time was the seriousness on the part of the government. Complacency led to failure in gauging the possible impact of the cyclone and the places it would hit, leading to avoidable human casualties.
(The writer is a senior Bhubaneswar-based journalist and has reported for the BBC for the last twenty years. He tweets at @geminianguddu. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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