Witnesses in Chennai and Pondicherry said trees had been toppled, there had been power outages throughout the night and disruption to phone and internet services in some areas.

Hundreds of people from fishing communities along north Tamil Nadu’s coast, and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh state, have moved to schools set up as relief centres until the weather system passes.

“Making relief efforts diffuclt, roads are blocked because of heavy rainfall, trains were canceled and international flights also canceled,” Al Jazeera’s Prerna Suri said.

“They had about 24 hours to prepare, unlike with other storms. So evacuation shelters are in place,” our correspondent said. “Eight teams from the disaster management force are deployed from New Delhi, with some 15,000 people put on high alert.”

The victims of cyclone in Bangladesh are poorest among the poor. Their views about effective warning system “lacks credibility” to the concerned bodies.But it is a real bad news when the merchant mariners have slammed Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) for suddenly raising the cyclone’s severity within an hour. It clearly demonstrates the BMD’s professional incompetence. Reuters provides the chilling details.

I was in Macau attending Mobile Asia 2007 when cyclone SIDR was brewing in the Bay of Bengal. BBC and CNN were updating its movement since November 12. To put a perspective to it, their weather commentators said SIDR’s intensity was similar to Katrina.

Both the international TV channels consistently mentioned Bangladesh being the very possible victim. Unlike in New Orleans, the international TV news crew did not physically report from the coastal area of Bangladesh. But the SIDR dominated their news and it gained prominence gradually.

PS:  Now with reports coming in that deaths will exceed 1000, judgment on the efficacy of warning and evacuation will have to be reserved.   While one death is one too many, we must remember that 300000-500000 died in the 1970 Bhola cyclone which hit, the coast on November 12th.   The fact that casualties will be be counted in the 1000s and not 100,000s is progress.   More needs to be done, underlining the importance of the continuing work to improve early warning and preparedness.

Powerful Cyclone Kills 242 in Bangladesh – New York Times

A cyclone that slammed into Bangladesh’s coast with 150 mph winds killed at least 242 people, leveled homes and forced the evacuation of 650,000 villagers before heading inland and losing strength Friday, officials said.Cyclone Sidr roared across the country’s southwestern coast late Thursday with driving rain and high waves. The storm left about 242 villagers, most of them from falling debris, said Nahid Sultana, an official at a cyclone control room in Dhaka.

By early Friday, the cyclone had weakened into a tropical storm and was moving across the country to the northeast. The department said that while skiles remained overcast, wind speed had fallen to 37 mph.

Storm surges nearly 4 feet high inundated low-lying areas and some offshore islands in the 15 coastal districts in the cyclone’s path. Communications with remote forest areas and offshore islands were temporarily lost.

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“We all know that India like any other nation in the world has its own share of vulnerability, risk and its capacity to respond to the disasters. The equations of these three factors can be well visualized in some of the worst disasters of the past – the Super Cyclone in Orissa in October 1999, the Bhuj earthquake in January and Tsunami in December 2004. All these revealed the mass casualty potential of natural disasters. ”

“The underlying message is whether it is natural or manmade, these disasters have the potential of causing mass casualties and we need to address these issues squarely. We need to adopt multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approach for prevention/mitigation strategies so as to develop capacities to improve response.”

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