KENDRAPARA: With another cyclone brewing in the Bay of Bengal, the district administration on Tuesday raised an alert advising fishermen and seaside villagers to take necessary precautions.
Over 117 cyclone shelters in the seaside villages are being readied to accommodate people. The authorities have also warned fishermen not to venture into the sea.
The district’s preparedness to deal with such eventualities is largely borne out of the devastating 1971 cyclone that claimed an estimated 5,000 lives in the seaside villages of Rajnagar and Mahakalapada blocks. In 1999, when the super cyclone struck, countless lives were saved as thousands of people were evacuated from vulnerable locations. The death toll from that tragedy was only 386 in Kendrapara.
The Odisha State Disaster Mitigation Authority (OSDMA) along with the district administration and other Government and non-Government agencies regularly organize mock cyclone, tsunami and flood drills to create awareness among people to face natural disasters. The mock drills have enhanced preparedness, evaluated response capabilities and improved coordination among all stakeholders as a result of which it is now easy to evacuate people to safer places, said Biraja Pati, a social worker.
The Government, two years back, had built 23 Early Warning Dissemination System (EWDS) towers at the seaside villages of the district to provide cyclone and tsunami warning to people. All the towers have been fitted with sirens that can alert localities up to a radius of 1.5 km, district emergency officer Sambit Satapathy said.