India stockpiles rations, plans evacuations as cyclone heads for southeast

BHUBANESWAR India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - India began stocking shelters with rations, deploying disaster response forces and planning mass evacuations as an increasingly powerful cyclone hurtled towards its southeast coast on Thursday.

Cyclone Hudhud is moving in from the Bay of Bengal and is expected to develop into a very severe cyclone, packing wind speeds of up to 140 kph (87 mph), before hitting the coast of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha states on the morning of Oct. 12.

Hudhud is now classified as a Category 1 severe cyclonic storm on a scale that rises to Category 5, according to the London-based storm tracking service, Tropical Storm Risk. It is predicted to strengthen to Category 4 before landfall around the key port city of Vishakapatnam in rice-growing Andhra Pradesh.

"We are stocking all the essential commodities so that people are not cut off from the supply of rations," Vishakhapatnam District Head N. Yuvaraj told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"We are assessing the probable habitations which are to be evacuated. We have also have warned fishermen not to venture out to sea, and are sending communication to those already out there to return to the coast."

India's weather office said the heavy rainfall and strong winds would likely cause extensive damage to thatched homes and disrupt electricity and telecommunications services, and road and rail traffic. It warned of flooding and storm surges up to two meters (6.5 feet) in low-lying areas.

The cyclone season runs from April to December, with severe storms often causing dozens of deaths, evacuations of thousands of people and widespread damage.

In October last year, a severe cyclone called Phailin battered the same region, ripping apart tens of thousands of mud-and-thatch homes and inundating large tracts of farmland.

Strong disaster preparedness, including the evacuation of nearly one million people to cyclone shelters, helped save many lives, aid workers said, comparing Phailin's death toll of 53 with a monster storm in 1999 which killed 10,000 people.

"ZERO CASUALTIES"

Officials in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha said they had set up 24-hour emergency control rooms and canceled the leave of civil servants working in high-risk areas. Nine of Andhra Pradesh's 13 districts and 16 of Odisha's 30 districts are on alert.

Thousands of members of the National and State Disaster Response Forces, and the fire services, are being sent to coastal areas to prepare for search and rescue operations and assist with evacuations.

"As the power supply is likely to be cut off ... all offices should make their back-up power arrangements. Generators ... in offices including health institutions should be immediately checked and adequate fuel stored," a statement by the Odisha government said.

"The government will strive for zero casualties," it said, ordering local officials to prepare evacuation plans, "giving highest priority to most vulnerable villages/ habitations."

(Writing by Nita Bhalla, editing by Tim Pearce)