Odisha is preparing as if Cyclone Arnab will hit it directly, even though the storm is forecast to make landfall in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi said the state would take no chances and reiterated a zero-casualty goal, a standard Odisha has made its own through years of cyclone preparation. Southern and coastal districts could see heavy rain and gusts of 43 to 56 miles per hour, and schools, colleges and childcare centres in Ganjam, Gajapati, Rayagada, Koraput and Malkangiri will close on October 28 and 29, with a red alert issued for those districts on October 28 and isolated rainfall of more than 8 inches possible.
The machinery of preparation
The numbers behind the preparation are large and deliberate. Around 60 Odisha disaster response teams and 17 national disaster response teams have been deployed, while 225 fire services teams are on high alert. Eight ministers have been sent to vulnerable districts to oversee preparations, and leave has been cancelled for district collectors and other key officials. In Ganjam, 100 cyclone shelters are ready and 1,000 temporary sites have been identified. Officials have been told to move people from vulnerable areas to safer locations, paying particular attention to the elderly, patients and pregnant women. Fishing at sea has been banned and tourists barred from hills, waterfalls and dams in six southern districts, because the secondary risks of a cyclone, a swollen river, a closed road, a tourist in the wrong place, are often the ones that cause casualties.
Why Odisha prepares for another state’s storm
The Bay of Bengal is one of the world’s most active regions for tropical cyclones, and a storm’s track is a forecast, not a promise. A shift of a few dozen kilometres, or a slower movement inland, can move the heaviest rain from one state to another, and Odisha’s southern districts sit close enough to the forecast track to face that risk. The state’s approach, prepare for the worst track while hoping for the forecast one, is the reason its zero casualty goal is taken seriously rather than treated as rhetoric. Whether Arnab follows the forecast to the Andhra coast between Bapatla and Visakhapatnam on October 28, or wobbles north, Odisha’s shelters, teams and closures will already be in place, and that, more than any single forecast, is what saves lives when a cyclone comes ashore.
