Kolkata on Thursday woke up to rebuild the historic city shattered by cyclone Amphan. Initially classified as a ‘super’ cyclone but downgraded to ‘extremely serious’ later, destroyed several parts of West Bengal, with the state capital among the worst hit.
Many of Kolkata’s 14 million people are without electricity and communications have been disrupted.
“This is the scariest weather situation I am witnessing in my life. We are inside our homes and all windows are shut.” wrote Mohammed Reyaz in his Facebook post on Wednesday, appealing for prayer.
The death toll due to devastation caused by Cyclone Amphan rose to 72 in West Bengal. State Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced a compensation of Rs 2.5 lakhs for those affected.
Mamata said that a meeting of a special task force will take place today to asses the damage and find ways to provide relief to the people.
At least 1,000-odd trees got uprooted across different thoroughfares and in localities, causing immense damage. National Disaster Response Force, since Wednesday night, is involved in rescue operations.
Visuals of airport hangars in Kolkata collapsing and water inundating runaways show the scale of damage the city suffered.
Minimum human loss due to accurate forecast by IMD, timely deployment of NDRF, reviewed the National Crisis Management Committee (NCMC) today.
Large parts of the city are still in dark as many transformers exploded during the storm surge. Most of Kolkata remains heavily inundated as the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) struggles to pump the water out.
Around early evening Wednesday, the city witnessed wind speeds of close to 130 kmph, which later went down to 105 kmph.
Coronavirus restrictions have been hampering emergency and relief efforts.
The last time the city was majorly affected by a cyclone was when it was hit by the “the tail” of Aila in 2009. During last year’s Cyclone Bulbul, the city escaped any major damage
