One of the biggest storms in years, Fani, advanced on Odisha last Friday. Millions of people who live in the low-lying coastal area were successfully evacuated from disaster prone areas before the cyclone hit the state.
The government responded to the natural disaster with everything they had – 43,000 volunteers with nearly 1,000 emergency workers and 12 battalion of NDRF.
Every mass media was used to transmit information, with 2.6 million text messages, television commercials, radio announcements, coastal sirens, and public address systems consisting the same message on a loop, in vernacular language.
Meanwhile, during this catastrophic time, when the wind was unleashing at 120 miles per hour, a photograph of a young female police officer, tweeted by Odisha police, who’s giving ride to two other women on her motorcycle is going viral. The cop is believed to be deployed at Talchua Police Station in Kendrapara. She was seen evacuating villagers to a temporary shelter home and received lot of praise online for her efforts.
Odisha police tweeted:
In action: Lady Police officer of Talchua Police Station, Kendrapara !!
Braving all odds and adversaries, our officers are making all the possible efforts to evacuate each single person to the safety. #MissionZeroCasualty#CycloneFani #OdishaPrepared4Fani pic.twitter.com/jbHRUYauRy
— Odisha Police (@odisha_police) May 2, 2019
In another tweet by Odisha police, another female officer was seen evacuating an elderly woman in her arms to a shelter home:
As per the instructions of @DGPOdisha Evacuation drive in Ganjam continues!
Visuals of our officers carrying the elderly people to the designated cyclone shelters. #MissionZeroCasualty #CycloneFani #OdishaPrepared4Fani pic.twitter.com/1ayAC8SQi5
— Odisha Police (@odisha_police) May 2, 2019
As per the report, the state government, with National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF), has evacuated nearly 1.2 million people from about 10,000 villages and 52 towns, within a record time of two days.
Photos and videos from disaster sites are heart-wrenching, but at the same time police personnel working tirelessly to help locals, clearing roads and distributing relief materials which includes food to displaced people and ferrying those in need to shelter homes is creating a lot of buzz on the internet.
Unsung heros! Salute to each one who's working for making life safe. #CycloneFani #Odisha https://t.co/bZYph8o91s
— Sushanta Kumar Mohapatra (@mohapatra) May 3, 2019
The United Nations agency for disaster risks reduction has praised India’s efforts to implement “Sendia Framework” for mitigating disaster risks, and India’s Meteorological Department for “almost pinpoint accuracy” of early warnings that has helped authorities conduct a well-planned, target based evacuation plan in order to minimise any collateral damage.
West Bengal has been put on high alert and warnings were issued in coastal areas, and fishermen were asked not to go for fishing in the sea. Several districts, including North and South 24 Pargana, East and West Midnapore, Howrah, Kolkata, Hooghly, Jhargram, and areas nearby Sundarban Delta are likely to be hit by the storm which will then move towards Bangladesh and eventually taper off.