This particular section of the study includes three main aspects which are intimately related to cyclonic storm Fani, viz., India’s preparedness, inundation details, and other damage statistics. The first one (disaster preparedness) helps to understand how India has able to tackle and overcome the situation by taking management proper steps and keeping the death toll in control. The last two aspects (inundation details with other damage statistics) help to get the idea about the devastation caused by ESCS Fani, despite taking the necessary steps to handle the cyclone situation.
5.1 India’s preparedness
The pre-storm and post-storm disaster preparedness programs always create several challenging situations for the country like India, the world’s second-most populous land with 1366 million residents (United Nations, 2019). In the case of the tropical cyclone, the seaside districts of India have to face more dangerous situations for having a high population density. Nearly 40% of the total population is more or less exposed to cyclones owing to living within 100 km of shoreline in India (NCRMP, 2019). The robust winds with heavy rainfall and storm surge during cyclonic storms can cause a severe loss that includes complete or partial destruction of families, buildings, roads, power networks, and water outages (FEMA, 2017). So, the proper pre-storm emergency preparedness plan takes an important role to reduce the damages and casualties caused by an unavoidable disaster like the tropical cyclone.
The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA), West Bengal Disaster Management and Civil Defence Department (WBDM and CD), Andhra Pradesh State Disaster Management Authority (APSDMA), Indian Red Cross Society, and United Nations (UN) have worked jointly for ensuring safety to the common people who are living along the track of ESCS Fani. Nearly 1.68 million persons have been evacuated from the path of Fani of three affected states (Odisha, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh) of India (UNICEF, 2019). This is considered the largest evacuation process not only in the cyclonic history of India but also in the cyclonic history of the World. A large number of cyclone or flood relief camps (9000 in Odisha, 471 in West Bengal, and 120 in Andhra Pradesh) have been used temporarily for the relocation of evacuated people during the storm event. More than 45000 volunteers, 2000 emergency workers, 100000 officials have worked day and night in the rescue operation in Odisha to fight against this deadly tropical cyclone. A combined amount of nearly 153 million USD has been released in advance from State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) to State Governments of Odisha, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh. As Fani has made landfall near Puri of Odisha Coast, special attention has been paid to the health sector as pre and post-storm measures by the Odisha government (IRC, 2019). After the storm event, 302 affected public health centers have been restored for providing emergency treatment. 184 mobile medical teams have been deployed for minor injured persons. 1945 pregnant women have also been shifted to delivery points. Besides, several other measures have also been occupied by the national, state, and local governments to battle against this monstrous ESCS. IMD received appreciation from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and other national & international scientific community and media for pinpoint accuracy during the storm event. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) has also praised India's zero casualty approach to manage extreme weather events like Fani.
5.2 Inundation detail
Effective monitoring of floods is quite impossible without the use of satellite images. GEE has made the work easier than before because of its capabilities to detect temporal changes on the earth’s surface (Uddin et al., 2019; DeVries et al., 2020; Agnihotri et al., 2019; Clement et al., 2017; Kussul et al., 2011) using the Sentinel-1's C-band SAR active sensor derived images, an independent dataset of any time of the day or night, irrespective of weather and environmental situations (ESA, 2020). So this particular cloud-based platform has been used for monitoring flood situation due to heavy rainfall (responsible for inland flooding) and storm surge (caused coastal inundation) during ESCS Fani.
The rainfall associated with ESCS Fani based on daily accumulated precipitation extracted from GPM IMERG final precipitation (0.1 degree X 0.1 degree, V06) data in Giovanni environment has been represented in Fig. 6 from April 26 to May 4, 2019. It indicates the occurrence of heavy to very heavy downpour over coastal Odisha, Gangetic West Bengal, and adjoining Bangladesh on May 3. Most of the places have experienced more than 75 mm accumulated rainfall in 24 hrs on that very day. As the cyclonic storm Fani has moved towards northeastern India through Bangladesh along the track and has weakened into a depression on May 4, it has also caused a large amount of rainfall over Bangladesh and adjoining areas of northeastern states of India (Assam, Meghalaya, and Arunachal Pradesh). On the other hand, the storm surge information from the Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC) portal in association with JRC under NOAA/HWRF also depicts that the part of Purba Medinipur and South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal have experienced high-level storm surge, varying in height from 2 to 3 meters during the storm event (Fig. 7). The coastal tract of Puri, Baleshwar & the part of Bhadrak district (Odisha) has faced moderate level storm surge (1–2 meters high) with the coastal part of Purba Medinipur and South 24 Parganas (West Bengal). The rest of the South 24 Parganas district from the seaside tract of West Bengal, Jagatsinghapur, and Kendrapara districts from the coastal tract of Odisha have also experienced low-level storm surge during cyclonic storm Fani. Thus, the heavy rainfall and powerful storm surge have jointly caused major damages due to inundation in the coastal districts of Odisha and West Bengal.
The cyclone-affected regions of Odisha and West Bengal have been divided into five equal width zones (15 km. each) based on the distance from the coast for a more detailed explanation, but it doesn’t signify that any inundation has not occurred beyond that extent (Fig. 7). The results derived from the investigation of the SAR images in the GEE environment help to understand the overall flood scenario over the major affected regions because of heavy rainfall and powerful storm surge (Table 5). The computed inundation statistics claim that Puri, one of the coastal districts of Odisha has faced major flooding due to a large amount of rainfall with a high level of storm surge during the storm event. Besides, the other parts of the first zone (0–15 km) within Odisha have also experienced large inundation than other zones due to the heavy downpour and moderate to low-level storm surge because the advancement of ESCS Fani has occurred towards the Gangetic West Bengal almost along the coastal tract of Odisha. On the other hand, the coastal tract of West Bengal has faced a significant inundation for experiencing high to low-level storm surge with heavy rainfall. The statistics also claim that the highest amount of inundation has occurred in the fourth zone (45–60 km) of West Bengal than other parts of the cyclone-affected regions because the summer cyclone Fani has moved towards Bangladesh through this zone and has caused heavy rainstorm on May 3, 2019. Figure 8 helps to get a better view of the most affected regions due to inundation during cyclonic storm Fani over Odisha and West Bengal.
Table 5
Inundation statistics of Odisha and West Bengal during extremely severe cyclonic storm (ESCS) Fani
Distance from coast (km)
|
Inundated Area (Sq. km.)
|
Odisha
|
West Bengal
|
0–15
|
47.99
|
50.41
|
15–30
|
20.03
|
19.22
|
30–45
|
18.05
|
39.49
|
45–60
|
20.67
|
63.51
|
60–75
|
23.07
|
30.67
|
5.3 Other damage statistics
If the flooding has been explained as the only consequence of the devastating tropical cyclone, the severity of the storm will be underestimated. The intensive rainfall, strong winds, and storm surges cause several other damages during storm event across the world, making the coastal people vulnerable to a cyclone (Khalil, 1993; Wang and Xu, 2008; Li and Li, 2013; Ward et al., 2011; Done et al., 2018; Mori and Takemi, 2016). The deadly cyclonic storm Fani has also unleashed copious rainfall with the powerful windstorm that has gusted up to 205 kph, leading to fatalities, destruction of kutcha houses, partial damage to buildings and other properties like roads, power sectors, health care centers, educational sector, embankment, etc. The trail of devastation caused by ESCS Fani in the large part of Odisha with West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh has been explained briefly in Table 6.
Table 6 Damage caused by the very severe cyclonic storm Fani in Odisha, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh of India
(Source: UNICEF, 2019; Odisha State Disaster Management Authority, United Nations, World Bank and ADB 2019)
Total Damage across Odisha, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh
|
People affected (million)
|
28
|
Districts affected
|
24
|
Deaths reported (all from Odisha)
|
64
|
Building affected
|
4610
|
Livestock Casualty (million)
|
3.73
|
Affected or Damage in Odisha
|
People affected (million)
|
16.5
|
Districts affected
|
14
|
Villages affected
|
18,388
|
Deaths reported
|
64
|
Perennial crops damage (sq. km)
|
197
|
Total estimated costs in USD (billion)
|
4.18
|
Casualties of poultry birds (million)
|
5.4
|
Fisheries
|
Traditional fishermen (million)
|
0.15
|
Traditional marine fishing boats
|
6,416
|
Fishing ponds
|
2,524
|
Educational sector
|
Primary and Secondary schools
|
5,735
|
Colleges (Govt. & Govt. aided)
|
102
|
Universities
|
5
|
Health sector
|
Public Health Facilities
|
1,031
|
Anganwadi centres
|
2,513
|
Houses damaged
|
Rural
|
295,703
|
Urban
|
66,040
|
Power sector
|
High tension poles
|
200
|
Distribution transformers
|
11,077
|
Length of damaged embankments (km)
|
22.67
|
Length of damaged roads (km)
|
11,763
|
Trees damaged (million)
|
2.19
|