Odisha Govt Has Taken Cyclone Amphan Seriously, Assures Chief Secretary

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has taken Cyclone Amphan seriously, and is acting accordingly.

Briefing the media, chief secretary Asit Tripathy said though the cyclonic storm won’t have landfall in Odisha and is heading towards West Bengal and Bangladesh coast, the state government has taken all possible measures and kept its machinery and manpower ready to effectively deal with the situation.

“Our preparation is done so as to deal with a landfall-like situation,” Tripathy said.

He added that the state government has had video conferencing with senior officials on the upcoming cyclone and will have another round of interaction with the officers tomorrow.

“The state government had two preparatory meetings with the Union cabinet secretary, Home secretary, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and other senior officials of the National Crisis Management Committee on Saturday and today. We had raised two issues. Going by our experiences in dealing with previous cyclones, we have found that the low transmission (LT) lines are damaged by wind speeds of 60-100 kmph. Though we have sufficient gang men for the restoration of LT lines, we have requested the Centre to keep required manpower and machinery ready so that power restoration work can be completed at the earliest possible if needed,” Tripathy said.

Referring to post-cyclone restoration work, he said that the Works, PWD and Rural Development and the Forest departments along with the NDRF, ODRAF and Fire Services team have been prepositioned in all 12 coastal districts to rev up the repair and restoration work and restore road connectivity.