Defeating Cyclones | Let India’s west coast learn from its east

Scientists attribute this to higher warming seen over the Arabian Sea in the past decades. As per the India Meteorological Department, the last decade has seen an 11 percent rise in cyclones over Indian seas with around 32 percent of them in the past five years alone. Not only are the number of cyclones in the Arabian Sea increasing, but the storms are becoming more intense owing to warmer seas.

Lessons From East

Cyclones such as Phyan (2009), Vayu (2019), Nisarga (2020) and recently Tauktae (2021) have devastated the western coast and caused damages in billions of dollars. While investments in cyclone tracking models have helped in early evacuation and reduction in loss of lives, the economic losses due to cyclones have constantly seen considerable increase with no sign of reduction in the foreseeable future. Unplanned urbanisation has rendered more to be destroyed on coastlines.

The eastern coastline has had a long-standing acquaintance with frequent cyclone landfalls, which has resulted in improved disaster preparedness, management strategies and recovery mechanisms. The 1999 Super Cyclone that hit Odisha completely obliterated the coastal region causing ~10,000 fatalities. Learning its lessons, the state considerably invested in disaster risk reduction measures, improved its disaster mitigation strategies along with strengthening co-ordination between Centre and state agencies that resulted in reduction of the loss of lives to below 100 during Fani (2019) and less than half a dozen during the recent landfall from Yaas (2021). A similar story can be seen from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu that proudly showcased the success in mitigating the impacts from cyclones such as Phailin (2013) and Nivar (2020).

Unprepared West

India’s west coast with big urban centres like Mumbai are now being exposed to such havocs. The impact of cyclone Tauktae (2021) has been hard on west coast leaving over 190 dead and billions of dollars in damage. The data from World Bank-funded National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project (NCRMP), which is being implemented by the National Disaster Management Authority and state agencies, shows that the western coastal states are lagging behind their eastern counterparts in enhancing coastal resilience measures such as building multi-purpose cyclone shelters that act as line of defence against the cyclone impacts and laying underground cables to minimise the downtime of power supply.

With cyclones coming close to highly urbanised cities in Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat, it’s imperative that inclusion of regionally tweaked risk strategies to answer the ‘Science of where’ should be carried out. Developing and investing in resilient infrastructure and creation of holistic, scalable and community level disaster risk plans is need of the hour.

Climate models show that coastal cities would continue to face increasing threat from compounding risks viz. cyclone winds, storm surges, sea level rise and flooding in the future. Hence, concerted focus on protecting and rebuilding natural defences such as coastal vegetation, mangroves, coastal sand dunes, salt pans and wetlands should be of high priority.

The east coast can show the west coast how to effectively invoke citizen awareness and a unified response mechanism by the administration. Local level climate and disaster risk assessments, supported by granular data tools and implementation of a holistic and effective disaster management plan can help assist in timely action over coastal cities in current times where the disasters seem to be increasing and response time decreasing.