Two men drowned and hundreds of trees and electricity poles were uprooted by Cyclone Biparjoy which weakened on Friday as it moved towards Pakistan after hitting the Indian coast.
More than 180,000 residents of the western Indian state of Gujarat and neighboring Pakistan have been preemptively relocated from the area Biparjoy — “disaster” in Bengali — was expected to pass through.
Less powerful than expected, the “very strong cyclonic storm” crossed the coast near the port of Jakhau on Thursday evening and blew sustained winds reaching 125 km / h, before starting to lose power a few hours later.
Indian forecasters expect it to calm down and become a moderate depression by Friday evening.
Two men in the Bhavnagar area drowned on Thursday evening after being washed away by the waters, according to the Gujarat state government.
Earlier, Relief Director CC Patel reported 23 injuries in the state.
Hundreds of utility poles were uprooted along the coast causing power outages across much of the region, a Gujarat government spokesman said.
Several hundred trees have also been uprooted and emergency teams are struggling to access villages due to debris on the roads.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said 22-year-old Mukesh Pattni from the concrete store where he took refuge with ten other members of his family. “I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday. The trees are falling, everything is collapsing. »
Nearly 500 homes were partially damaged after the cyclone hit, state relief commissioner Alok Pandey said.
More than 100,000 residents of this state had left the coastal areas to take shelter inland, according to the authorities.
In Pakistan, Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman announced that 82,000 people had been evacuated from southeastern coastal areas.
“Largely spared”
On Friday morning, Ms Rehman said in a Twitter post that her country had been “largely spared the storm at the peak of its strength”.
Rainfall of more than 30cm is, however, forecast for some coastal areas of Pakistan on Friday and Saturday, accompanied by storm surges of up to 2.5 metres.
Shops closed early Thursday evening in the Pakistani town of Badin and the usually bustling streets emptied as night fell.
“Everyone is extremely scared,” Iqbal Mallah, a 30-year-old civil servant, said on Friday.
Cyclones are frequent in this region of the Indian Ocean, where tens of millions of people live. But scientists explain that these phenomena are gaining power due to global warming.
One of them, climatologist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology Roxy Mathew Koll, explained that cyclones draw their energy from warm waters and that surface temperatures in the Arabian Sea, also called of Oman, were 1.2 to 1.4 degrees Celsius higher than four decades ago.
“The rapid warming of the Arabian Sea, coupled with global warming, tends to increase heat flux from the ocean to the atmosphere and promote more intense cyclones,” he summarized.
With Ashraf Khan, in Badin, Pakistan