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