Cyclonic storm YAAS likely to intensify into very severe cyclonic storm during next 12 hours

The severe cyclonic storm YAAS is likely to intensify further into a very serious cyclonic storm during the next 12 hours. According to the India Meteorological Department, it is now centred at about 390 kilometres from Paradeep and 490 kilometres from Baleshwar in Odisha. Moving at a speed of about 10 kilometre per hour as of now, it is expected to cross the North Odisha West Bengal coast around Balasore in Odisha at around noon tomorrow.

Odisha government has taken all preemptive and precautionary measures to minimise the impact of the impending cyclone. All concerned district collectors especially in the north Odisha coastal districts have been asked to complete the evacuation process of the people from the low lying and vulnerable areas to cyclone shelters and alternate centres in their respective districts by afternoon today.

Adequate numbers of relief and rescue teams including more than 50 teams of NDRF and more than 60 team of ODRAF are in position at different places in the areas likely to be impacted most by the very severe cyclonic storm.

While a large number of rescue, relief and restoration teams have been mobilized especially in districts like Baleshwar, Bhadrak, Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara and Mayurbhanj, these works are being supervised by senior level secretaries and Police officers in each of these districts.

Meanwhile, many areas in over half the total districts of Odisha, have been experiencing mild to moderate winds along with sporadic rainfall of varying degrees between drizzle and downpour since yesterday afternoon, ahead of Yaas, likely to strike north odisha-west Bengal coast as a very severe cyclonic storm at around noon, tomorrow.

The India Meteorological Department said cyclonic storm is expected to make landfall with heavy to extremely heavy rainfall, storm surges from 3 to 4 metres and wind speed gusting upto 185 kilometres per hour.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah chaired a meeting via video conference yesterday with the Chief Ministers of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and the Lieutenant Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands to review preparations in view of Cyclone Yaas. He directed senior officers to work in close co-ordination with states to ensure safe evacuation of people from high-risk areas. He also instructed all concerned departments to ensure timely evacuation of those involved in off-shore activities. Mr. Shah stressed on the need to ensure that time duration of outages of power supply and communication network are minimum and are restored swiftly.

DG NDRF S.N. Pradhan has said that more than 100 teams of NDRF are being deployed in five states and one UT namely, Odisha, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand and Andaman & Nicobar Islands in view of Cyclone Yaas. Mr Pradhan said, teams are being airlifted from different parts of the country. He said, 52 teams are being deployed in Odisha and 35 teams in West Bengal.