Cyclone Biparjoy leaves destructive trail on Indian coast

AHMEDABAD/KARACHI – Cyclone Biparjoy tore down power poles and uprooted trees on Friday after pummelling the Indian coastline, though the storm was weaker than initially feared.

More than 180,000 people were evacuated in India and Pakistan

in the past few days as the authorities braced themselves for the cyclone, named Biparjoy, which means “disaster” or “calamity” in the Bengali language.

It made landfall late on Thursday near Jakhau, a port in the Indian state of Gujarat that is close to the border with Pakistan, weather officials said.

The storm packed sustained winds of up to 125kmh as it struck, but it weakened overnight.

Indian forecasters expect it to calm into a moderate low-pressure system by late Friday.

Two men, both shepherds, died while trying to prevent their cattle from being swept away during heavy rain and floods in Gujarat’s Bhavnagar district on Thursday evening, the state government said.

Relief director C. C. Patel had earlier told AFP there had been no deaths in Gujarat, but 23 people had been injured in the storm.

Driving rain and howling winds continued to lash the state’s coast on Friday, despite the worst of the danger receding. 

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Mr Mukesh Pattni, 22, told AFP from the concrete shophouse where he and 10 other family members took shelter. “I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday. Trees are falling, everything is falling apart.”

State relief commissioner Alok Pandey said nearly 500 homes had been partially damaged after Biparjoy made landfall.

More than 1,000 villages around the coast were without electricity on Friday as the force of the storm knocked down power lines. Rescue crews were working to clear trees knocked onto roads and restore access to villages.

In neighbouring Pakistan, the cyclone had no major impact, with rain reported in some parts of the southern metropolis of Karachi, which was on high alert.

Pakistan’s Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman said “no human lives were lost” on her side of the border. 

“Thank God it did not directly hit the coastal areas of Pakistan,” she told broadcaster Dunya.

The weather department advised the local authorities to remain on alert for expected heavy rain in some coastal areas until Saturday.

On Friday, shops and markets gradually reopened under drizzling skies and a cool ocean breeze in Thatta, a city around 50km inland. 

“So far, so good,” said 40-year-old government worker Hashim Shaikh. “We were pushed into a state of fear for the past several days, but now it seems to be over.”

In the fishing port of Keti Bandar – forecast to be hit hardest by the storm – “there was zero damage”, according to engineer Rahimullah Qureshi from the provincial irrigation department. 

Cyclones are a regular and deadly menace in coastal areas of the northern Indian Ocean, where tens of millions of people live. 

In 2021, the coast of Gujarat was hit by the more powerful Cyclone Tauktae, which killed more than 150 people and caused large-scale destruction. 

More than 4,000 people died in India when another cyclone hit the same coastline in 1998. 

Scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer with climate change. 

Mr Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate researcher at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said cyclones derive their energy from warm waters, and that surface temperatures in the Arabian Sea were 1.2 deg C to 1.4 deg C warmer than four decades ago. AFP, REUTERS