Tauktae: Indian Navy, Coast Guard rescue over 300 people from barges

Indian Navy, Coast Guard lead rescue in the Arabian Sea off Mumbai coast

The Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard had rescued 314 people till Tuesday evening from two barges that went adrift in the Arabian Sea near Mumbai as Cyclone Tauktae struck.

The storm showed signs of weakening, but not before causing significant damage to Maharashtra and Gujarat.

In Gujarat, at least seven people were killed as the cyclone battered parts of the state and left behind a trail of destruction along the coast, uprooting electricity poles and trees, and damaging several houses and roads, officials said on Tuesday. In Mumbai, three lives were lost and 10 people were injured in the last 24 hours.

Over 16,000 houses were also damaged and more than 40,000 trees and over 1,000 poles uprooted due to the cyclonic storm in Gujarat, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said.

Meanwhile, in Maharash­tra, three barges and an oil rig with 707 personnel on board had gone adrift on Monday.

These included an accommodation barge P305 with 273 persons onboard; cargo barge GAL Constructor with 137 personnel onboard; accommodation barge SS-3 with 196 personnel aboard; and the Sagar Bhushan oil rig with 101 personnel, a navy official said.

All 137 onboard GAL Constructor and 177 of the 273 aboard P305 have been rescued so far, the official said.

“Two Coast Guard Chetak helicopters operating from the Coast Guard Air station in Daman rescued personnel on board the GAL Constructor. One more Chetak helicopter was also pressed into service for the SAR (search and rescue) operations,” he said.

There is no word yet on the progress of rescue operations for the accommodation barge SS-3 and the Sagar Bhushan oil rig.

Navy ships were deployed on Monday after a request for assistance for barge P305, which went adrift off Heera oil fields in the Bombay High area with 273 personnel on board. The oil fields are around 70 km southwest of Mumbai.

Sixty persons on board the P305 barge were rescued till 11 pm and the remaining till Tuesday afternoon, the official said, adding a navy helicopter brought three rescues to INS Shikra this morning.

State-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) had on Monday said barge P305 with 261 personnel deployed for offshore drilling got de-anchored and began drifting because of the cyclonic storm Tauktae.

Lives and supplies hit

The India Meteorological Dep­artment (IMD) said that the landfall process of the eye of the extremely severe cyclonic storm Tauktae, which hit the Gujarat coast in the Saurashtra region between Diu and Una, ended around midnight.

The cyclone crossed the Gujarat coast as an “extremely severe cyclonic storm” and gradually weakened, IMD said.

On Tuesday evening, it lay over the Saurashtra region, 75 km south-south-west of Ahmedabad. The wind intensity reduced to 105-115 kmph, gusting to 125 kmph, according to the IMD bulletin.
 

Boats at sea
 
A barge is a long, flat-bottomed boat carrying freight or personnel either on its own power or towed by another.
 
An accommodation barge is of shallow draft (vessel whose keel is not far below the waterline) and is used to accommodate personnel on projects where shore accommodation is not available.
 
Offshore accommodation barges are fully autonomous and used mainly in the oil and gas industries.

Before the cyclonic intensity weakened, at least seven people were killed — three in Bhavnagar and one each in Rajkot, Patan, Amreli and Valsad, officials said.

Also, 159 roads were damaged and 196 blocked, the official said, adding that 45 of them had been cleared for traffic movement. There was a power outage in 2,437 villages but supply to 484 of them has been restored, the officials added.

The state government's major concern was uninterrupted treatment of Covid-19 patients in around 1,400 hospitals across Gujarat.

Out of these facilities, 16 faced a power outage due to the cyclone. Electricity supply was restored in 12 of them, while the remaining four were operating on backup power generators.

The production of medical oxygen at a plant in Bhavnagar was disrupted due to the cyclonic storm, but the supply continued from the buffer stock, the official said.

According to the IMD, most places of Gujarat are likely to receive light to moderate rainfall on Tuesday, with heavy to very heavy rainfall and extremely heavy rainfall in isolated places in these areas.

Home Minister Amit Shah, meanwhile, spoke to the chief ministers of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Gujarat and Diu tomorrow to review the situation and damage due to Cyclone Tauktae.