India Evacuates 1 Million as Tropical Cyclone Dana Nears

About a million people were evacuated from parts of India’s eastern coast on Thursday as Tropical Cyclone Dana approached, with airports, schools and train services shut down as the storm brought flooding and landslide risks to some of the country’s poorest communities.

Dana was churning northwest across the Bay of Bengal toward the state of Odisha with the force of a Category 1 hurricane, with winds of about 75 miles per hour, the U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said early Thursday. It was forecast to make landfall along Odisha’s coast overnight.

A million residents in Odisha were being relocated to more than 5,000 camps that the government has set up, Suresh Pujari, Odisha’s minister of revenue and disaster management, told reporters on Wednesday. The neighboring state of West Bengal has also evacuated residents, according to the local news media.

Dana has brought fears of widespread destruction to a region that was devastated by a much more powerful cyclone in 1999 that killed almost 10,000 people. Most of the deaths from that storm, which struck with Category 5 winds, were in Odisha, one of India’s poorest states. Many in the state live in low-lying coastal areas in shacks made of mud and sticks.

But the state, which has a population of about 42 million, has since become better prepared, setting up a disaster management agency, building shelters and preparing evacuation routes. Many of the preparations for Dana, including the swift evacuations, were informed by India’s experience in 1999.

On Thursday, India deployed its navy and other rescue teams for disaster relief. Warnings of possible cyclones and extremely heavy rainfall were also in place in the coastal areas of Odisha and West Bengal, with two to four