Monday, March 17, 2025 | 11:57 PM ISTहिंदी में पढें
Business Standard
Notification Icon
userprofile IconSearch

How do you save a million people from a cyclone? Odisha has the answer

Cyclone Fani slammed into Odisha on Friday morning with the force of a major hurricane, packing 120 mile per hour winds

cyclone fani
Premium

A fish vendor holds onto his umbrella against the fast blowing wind, on the banks of Brahmaputra river, in Guwahati on Saturday. Cyclone Fani slammed into Odisha on Friday morning with the force of a major hurricane, packing 200 kmph winds

Hari Kumar, Jeffrey Gettleman & Sameer Yasir | NYT Bhubaneswar
Flights were cancelled. Train service was out.

And one of the biggest storms in years was bearing down on Odisha, where millions of people live cheek by jowl in a low-lying coastal area in mud-and-stick shacks.
 
But government authorities in Odisha, hardly stood still. To warn people of what was coming, they deployed everything they had: 2.6 million text messages, 43,000 volunteers, nearly 1,000 emergency workers, television commercials, coastal sirens, buses, police officers, and public address systems blaring the same message on a loop, in local language, in very clear terms: “A cyclone is coming. Get to the shelters.”

It

What you get on BS Premium?

  • Unlock 30+ premium stories daily hand-picked by our editors, across devices on browser and app.
  • Pick your 5 favourite companies, get a daily email with all news updates on them.
  • Full access to our intuitive epaper - clip, save, share articles from any device; newspaper archives from 2006.
  • Preferential invites to Business Standard events.
  • Curated newsletters on markets, personal finance, policy & politics, start-ups, technology, and more.
VIEW ALL FAQs

Need More Information - write to us at assist@bsmail.in