India evacuates 150,000 as cyclone Hudhud intensifies

PUDIMADAKA, India —About 150,000 people were evacuated on India's eastern seaboard on Saturday as cyclone Hudhud bore down and grew in sheer force, threatening to devastate farmland and fishing villages when it hits the coast on Sunday morning.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) rated Hudhud as a very severe cyclonic storm that could pack gusts of over 120 mph and dump more than 10 inches) of rain when it makes landfall.

The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS), run by the United Nations and the European Commission, forecast even higher peak wind speeds of 130 mph. That would make Hudhud a Category 4 storm capable of inflicting "catastrophic" damage.

Around 150,000 people have been evacuated in the coastal state of Andhra Pradesh to high-rise buildings, shelters and relief centers, said senior disaster management official Hymabati. A further 50,000 may still be moved to safety, she added.

Authorities further north in Odisha state said they were monitoring the situation and would, if necessary, move 300,000 people most at risk to nearby shelters.

"We have already shifted about 10,000 people from low-lying areas and plan to evacuate 14,000 more," N. Yubaraj, administrative chief of the coastal district of Visakhapatnam district, told Reuters.

Visakhapatnam, also known as Vizag, is the largest city in Andhra Pradesh and hosts a major Indian naval base.

In Pudimadaka, a coastal village where many are fishermen, locals have been reluctant to leave.

"People are adamant. They are not willing to go. For the past three days we have been convincing them. Thank God. Now they agreed," Vasantha Rayudu, a local administrative officer, said while supervising the evacuation work.

"We convinced the people after holding a series of discussions with the village elders," said Rayudu, sitting in a small room with dozens of officials and policemen as huge waves crashed on the coast few meters away.

As a man beat a small drum and urged people by a loudspeaker to board nearby buses, tea seller V. Varalakshmi said she had packed her bags, but did not want to go.

"For the past 14 years, I have been selling tea here, the sea has never caused any harm to us," the 52-year-old woman said as she served a customer.

In New Delhi, India's Crisis Management Committee met to review readiness for the onslaught from Hudhud.

"All the central agencies are fully geared up to provide necessary assistance," the government said in a statement, adding that 39 National Disaster Response Force teams had been deployed to the two states.

Cyclones in the Bay of Bengal are common at this time of year. These often cause deaths, mass evacuations of coastal villages, disruption of power and phone services as well as damage to crops and property in eastern India and Bangladesh.

Humanitarian impact

Hudhud was tracking west-northwest, 156 miles southeast of Vizag at 2:30 pm on Saturday afternoon (0600 ET), the IMD said.

The cyclone was strong enough to have a "high humanitarian impact" on more than 7 million people, the GDACS said in an updated bulletin.

The system also forecast a storm surge of 1.7 meters. The IMD said this could result in flooding of low-lying coastal areas around Visakhapatnam, Vijayanagaram and Srikakulam.

The evacuation effort was comparable in scale to the one that preceded Cyclone Phailin exactly a year ago, and which was credited with minimizing the fatalities to 53. When a huge storm hit the same area 15 years ago, 10,000 people died.

"Hudhud is now the size of Phailin, though not yet as strong," said Eric Holthaus, a U.S.-based meteorologist at online magazine Slate.

"It's strengthened overnight, and most computer models are intent on bringing it up to nearly the same strength as Phailin was at landfall.

"It's worrying that international agencies are rating Hudhud's current strength higher than IMD's peak forecast, but we can only hope that the evacuations under way are sufficient to protect those in the storm's path," Holthaus said.

Authorities have been stocking cyclone shelters with dry rations, water purification tablets and generators. They have opened up 24-hour emergency control rooms and dispatched satellite phones to officials in charge of vulnerable districts.

(Additional reporting by Nita Bhalla; Writing by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Malini Menon, Richard Borsuk and Stephen Powell)