DHAKA, Bangladesh: A mammoth preparation exercise that included the evacuation of more than 1 million people appears to have spared India a devastating death toll from one of the biggest storms in decades, though the full extent of the damage was yet to be known, officials said Saturday.
Cyclone Fani packed winds of 250 kilometers (155 miles) per hour when it made landfall in eastern Odisha state on Friday, equivalent in strength to a Category 4 hurricane, said Mohammad Heidarzadei, an expert on cyclones at Brunel University of London.
As of late Saturday, India's National Disaster Response Force director S.N. Pradhan said three people had been killed, though the storm smashed thatched-roof huts, uprooted trees and power lines, ripped the roof off a medical college and sprayed the emptied coastline with debris.
"The precautions that have been taken should be continued," Pradhan said.
Officials cautioned that the death toll could rise as communications were restored.
Fani crossed over India's West Bengal state and moved northeast toward Bangladesh on Saturday, weakening from a severe cyclonic storm to a cyclonic storm.
At least a dozen people had been confirmed killed in Bangladesh as the cyclone hovered over the country's southwestern coast early Saturday, delivering battering rain storms. Lightening killed at least six people, local newspapers and TV reported.
However, the death toll had not increased by Saturday afternoon, suggesting effective preparedness in Bangladesh as well.
Bad weather from the storm system was projected to affect around 100 million people in South Asia, from India's distant Andaman Islands to Mount Everest in Nepal.
The relatively low casualty count demonstrates much improved disaster readiness in India since 1999, when a "super" cyclone killed around 10,000 people and devastated large parts of Odisha.
"In the event of such a major calamity like this — where Odisha was hit by close to a super-cyclone — instead of being a tragedy of humongous proportion, we are in the process of restoring critical infrastructure. That is the transformation that Odisha has had," the state's top government official, Naveen Patnaik, said in a statement.
India's disaster response agency said authorities were working "on war footing" to restore power and communications, and clear roads of debris.
Widespread power outages, damaged water supplies and roads blocked by fallen trees and power lines made transport around the affected area difficult, officials said.
Pravat Ranjan Mohapatra, the deputy relief commissioner at Odisha's emergency center, said his phone line and internet were down for most of Saturday.
"Earlier we were not able to connect with authorities for infrastructure damage, how many houses are damaged or how many people have died or were injured," he said.
According to the Press Trust of India, one victim was a teenager killed by a falling tree in the district of Puri, a popular tourist area in Odisha. Another woman was killed while fetching water when she was struck by flying debris loosened from a concrete structure.
Another woman, age 65, died after a suspected heart attack at a cyclone shelter, PTI reported.
Cyclone Fani kills at least 15 as it moves to Bangladesh
Cyclone Fani kills at least 15 as it moves to Bangladesh
- Some 400,000 people have been taken to shelters
- Eight people reportedly died in India because of the storm
Gisèle Pelicot recounts harrowing discovery of her husband’s rape crimes
PARIS: Gisèle Pelicot’s brain froze as the French police officer revealed the unthinkable.
“Fifty-three men had come to our house to rape me,” she recalls him telling her.
Sharing details of the horror that until now had largely been reserved for French courts, Pelicot is publicly telling her story of survival and courage in her own words, in a book and her first series of interviews since a landmark trial in 2024 turned her into a global icon against sexual violence and imprisoned her husband who knocked her out with drugs so other men could assault her inert body.
Extracts of “A Hymn to Life, Shame Has to Change Sides,” published by French newspaper Le Monde, rewound to Nov. 2, 2020 — the day when her world fell apart. Her then-husband, Dominique Pelicot, had been summoned by police for questioning after a supermarket security guard caught him secretly taking video up women’s skirts.
Gisèle accompanied him and was completely unprepared for the bombshell delivered by the officer, Laurent Perret. Gradually, and with care, he explained how the man she regarded as a loving husband and whom she described as “a super guy” had, in fact, made her the unwitting victim of his perversions.
“I am going to show you photos and videos that are not going to please you,” the officer said, words she recounts in the book.
The first showed a man raping a woman who had been laid out on her side and dressed up in a suspender belt.
“That’s you in this photo,” the officer said. He then showed her another photo, and another after that — drawn from a collection of images that Dominique Pelicot took of his wife over the years when he regularly knocked her unconscious by lacing her food and drink with drugs, so strangers he invited to their home could assault her while he filmed.
