India braces for cyclone Ditwah after havoc in SL

Authorities rushed 28 disaster response teams and set up 6,000 relief camps in Tamil Nadu as the cyclone Ditwah, which has killed at least 153 people and left nearly 200 missing in Sri Lanka, inched closer to the country’s southeastern coast ~ with its hardest impact forecast to arrive on Sunday.

- Jayashree Nandi

Chennai airport cancelled 54 flights and the railways activated a war room as authorities prepared for damaging winds, lashing rain and storm surges.

The India Meteorological Department issued a red alert for parts of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, warning of extremely heavy rain over Cuddalore, Nagapattinam, Mayiladuthurai, Villuppuram, and Chengalpattu districts, and the Puducherry-Karaikal region.

At 10pm on Saturday, the cyclone was centred 80km southeast of Vedaranyam, 100km southeast of Karaikal, 190km south-southeast of Puducherry, and 290km south of Chennai.

The storm was forecasted to travel north-northwest and arrive over the southwest Bay of Bengal, close to North Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and adjoining south Andhra Pradesh coasts, by early Sunday morning. As it moves in that direction, the cyclonic storm will be positioned over the southwest Bay of Bengal, approximately 25 km from the Tamil Nadu-Puducherry coastline, by Sunday evening.

"It is a cyclone with maximum wind speed presently 70 to 80 kmph. We are expecting same wind speed to prevail until Sunday morning," said M Mohapatra, director general of the India Meteorological Department.

"These wind speeds are not that high but they can have large-scale impact on standing crops. There can be inundation of low lying areas. Storm surge of half to Im is likely tonight."

In neighbouring Sri Lanka, which lay on the path of the storm, close to 20,000 homes had been destroyed and over 100,000 people were moved to government shelters.