The devastation and mass casualties caused by the worst cyclone to hit India in over a decade was seen firsthand by its Prime Minister Narendra Modi
Cyclone Amphan killed at least 96 people, officials said after it swept in from the Bay of Bengal on Wednesday. Eighty fatalities were in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal and 16 were in neighbouring Bangladesh, after winds of up to 185 km per hour caused flooding, blew away roofs, uprooted trees and ripped up power lines.
Modi was flown over the area, surveying vast tracts of land under water, while in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal, police used drones to assess the damage from Amphan, which killed at least 19 people in the city. The cyclone also damaged some 19 kilometres of embankments around Gosaba, causing 13 breaches that led salty water to inundate swathes of land, he said.
The crisis could be compounded by the ongoing coronavirus outbreak as many returning migrant workers had been quarantined at home but are now forced to mix with the rest of the population, he said. In Kolkata, an estimated 10,000 trees were brought down during the storm that lasted several hours and brought extensive flooding, officials said.
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