Aid workers distributed rice, dried fruit, water and tarpaulins yesterday to the victims of a ferocious cyclone that killed at least 112 people in northeastern India and demolished tens of thousands of mud huts.
Rescuers also cleared hundreds of uprooted trees blocking road access to the devastated region, said Vyasji, a Bihar state disaster management official who goes by one name.
Packing winds of more than 160kph, the cyclone struck close to midnight on Tuesday in parts of West Bengal and Bihar states, ripping up trees and snapping telephone and electricity lines, West Bengal Civil Defense Minister Srikumar Mukherjee said.
Hundreds of people were injured and thousands left homeless.
They were caught unaware as there was no cyclone warning from the weather department, said Devesh Chandra Thakur, Bihar state’s minister for disaster management.
“Most people were sleeping when the cyclone struck. They ran out of their homes into the open,” said M.B. Shajuruddin, a 30-year-old teacher in Chhota Suhar, a village in West Bengal.
The storm destroyed most of the village’s 500 tin-roofed huts and splintered trees.
“We have so far received no government help ... People are surviving on whatever they are left with,” he said.
Vyasji said rescuers found another 23 bodies overnight from northeastern Bihar districts of Araria, Kishenganj and Purnea, raising the death toll to 112.
Authorities handed tarpaulin sheets to the cyclone victims to set up temporary shelters in the region and distributed food and water, Vyasji said.
Namita Biswas, 51, a housewife in West Bengal, said by phone she and her husband were sleeping in their hut when it was crushed by a tree that broke from the impact of the cyclone. Her husband was killed.
The cyclone demolished nearly 50,000 mud huts in West Bengal and thousands more in Bihar, officials said.
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