By Jatindra Dash
BHUBANESWAR, India (Reuters) – Cyclone Michaung barrelled into the southern Indian coast on Tuesday with winds of up to 110 kph (70 mph), its arrival preceded by intense rain and flooding that killed at least 13 people, as officials assessed the damage.
The Indian weather office said Michaung, which had weakened to ‘cyclonic storm intensity’ by late Tuesday, implying wind speeds of 65-75 kph, was likely to maintain this strength over the next 6 hours.
Up to 200 mm (8 inches) of rain is expected in Andhra Pradesh state, where it made landfall, over the next 24 hours.
Torrential rains sent tall waves crashing into coastal towns of southern states over the last two days as the cyclone approached, submerging roads and spurring the cancellation of train services and flights.
The 13 killed included a 4-year-old boy who died after a wall collapsed.
The cyclone made landfall near the town of Bapatla in Andhra Pradesh state, the India Meteorological Department said, adding on Tuesday evening on the X platform that the landfall process was completed.
Officials from the state said no casualties were reported on Tuesday. More than 140 trains and 40 flights were cancelled in the state, and at least 8,000 people were evacuated, they said.
“The damage reports are yet to come because some low-lying areas have stagnant water. There were road blockages and trees were uprooted,” a senior state disaster department officer, who did not want to be named, told Reuters.
In Tamil Nadu’s capital city Chennai, a major electronics and manufacturing hub, residents were seen wading through waist-deep floodwaters, which also swept away cars.
For Chennai residents, the floods triggered memories of similar rains eight years ago which killed 290 people, with some activists questioning whether the city’s infrastructure could handle extreme weather events.
Referring to the city’s attempts to improve stormwater drainage systems over the past year, Raj Bhagat P, a civil engineer and geo-analytics expert told Reuters: “Their solutions would have helped a lot in moderate and heavy rainfall, but not in very heavy and extremely heavy rains.”
The city’s airport – one of the busiest in the country – was closed on Monday after a runway was submerged and reopening at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the federal civil aviation ministry said.
Taiwan’s Foxconn and Pegatron halted Apple iPhone production at their facilities near Chennai due to the heavy rains, sources familiar with the matter said on Monday.
(Reporting by Jatindra Dash and Rishika Sadam; Additional reporting by Aditi Shah and Sethuraman N R, Writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Sakshi Dayal; Editing by Miral Fahmy, Jacqueline Wong and Bernadette Baum)
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