NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A cyclone is expected to strike the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh within the next 24 hours, India's weather office warned on Thursday, advising authorities to suspend fishing operations and evacuate villagers living along the coast.
Cyclone Helen is moving in from the Bay of Bengal and is forecast to bring gales of up to 110 km per hour (68 miles per hour), heavy rains and storm surges reaching 1.5 metres (5 feet) when it makes landfall close to the city of Ongole on Friday afternoon.
“Extensive damage to thatched roofs and huts. Minor damage to power and communication lines due to uprooting of large avenue trees. Flooding of escape routes,” the Indian Meteorological Department’s (IMD) latest bulletin listed as possible impacts from the storm.
Helen is also predicted to impact parts of Odisha and the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, said the IMD.
India's cyclone season generally lasts from April to December with severe storms often causing dozens of deaths, evacuations of tens of thousands of people from low-lying villages and widespread crop and property damage.
Last month, a severe cyclone called Phailin battered Odisha and parts of Andhra Pradesh, ripping apart tens of thousands of mud-and-thatch homes, inundating large tracts of farmland and disrupting electricity and telecommunications.
Strong disaster preparedness, including the evacuation of close one million people to cyclone shelters, helped save countless lives, said aid workers, who compared Phailin to a monster storm which killed 10,000 people died in 1999.
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