Odisha now faces another struggle

Bhubaneswar:17.10.13: The worst affected district, Ganjam, is now in a sever disaster. Preliminary estimates indicate that 234,000 houses have been destroyed and the electricity infrastructure of the district requires a huge reconstruction effort. The damage in terms of lost livelihoods, due to crop destruction, work loss and other economic effects, will be fully known only in the weeks and months ahead. Phailin’s final bill may end up biting Odisha quite a bit.

Further, its administrative ability to evacuate residents from the disaster zone was non-existent. For crucial days, it was the army that delivered all the essential services apart from the task of rescuing and ferrying residents to safety. So the record is too patchy to say that India as a whole has moved on Mr.Ambika,Odisha chapter UNDP said.

Balasore, Mayurbhanj, Jajpur, Keojhar and Bhadrak districts in the state are flooded, and power distribution systems and grids have been severely damaged in many places, Gajapati and Kandhamal especially in Ganjam, by the severest cyclone to hit the country in several years, state government officials said here.

Even as the Odisha government is grappling with heavy flooding in several areas and the prospect of large-scale rehabilitation following Cyclone Phailin, the meteorological department has predicted heavy rainfall in several northern states as a fallout of the storm.