India evacuates 100,000 from homes, COVID-19 hospital before cyclone
03 June, 2020
At least 100,000 people, including some coronavirus patients, were being moved to safer locations according to officials on Tuesday (Jun 2), as India's west coast braced for a cyclone, the first such storm to threaten Mumbai in a lot more than 70 years.
Authorities in India's financial capital, which is struggling to support the pandemic, evacuated practically 150 COVID-19 patients from a recently built field hospital to a facility with a concrete roof as a precautionary measure, officials said.
The principle minister of Maharashtra state, which Mumbai is the capital, said people living in flimsy homes near to the shore were being moved to safer places before Cyclone Nisarga makes its scheduled landfall on Wednesday afternoon or evening.
"Slum-dwellers ... in low-lying areas have already been instructed to evacuate," Uddhav Thackeray said in a note posted by his office on Twitter.
In Maharashtra's Palghar district, a lot more than 21,000 villagers were being evacuated, local media reported, citing officials.
Mumbai has rarely faced the brunt of cyclones - the last serious storm to hit metropolis struck in 1948, killing 12 persons and injuring more than 100.
Indian meteorologists have warned of heavy rainfall - with winds of 100-110 kmph and gusts as high as 120 kph - creating harm to thatched huts, power lines and one or two metre-high storm surges inundating low-lying regions of Maharashtra.
Nisarga is also expected to hit neighbouring Gujarat state, with practically 79,000 persons to be evacuated from coastal regions by early Wednesday, Gujarat relief commissioner Harshad Patel told reporters.
Patel said 18 districts over the state would experience heavy rainfall and strong winds of up to 110 kmph.
"In wake of the coronavirus outbreak, all standard operating procedures are being followed at the short-term shelters which were sanitised and instructions have already been issued on following safe distancing," Arpit Sagar, the official in Valsad, told AFP.
Nisarga occurs the heels of Cyclone Amphan, which killed a lot more than 100 people as it ravaged eastern India and Bangladesh last month, flattening villages, destroying farms and leaving millions without electricity.
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