The two western states, already battling a raging pandemic, which has put their health infrastructure under severe strain, opened new fronts to tackle the fallout of the storm which is expected to make a landfall close to Mumbai on Wednesday. They are likely to be impacted most by the cyclone.
While man and a woman were reported killed when trees came crashing down on them in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, a 13-year-old girl died in a similar incident in adjoining Howrah. No casualties have been reported from Odisha yet.
The entire area has been cordoned off and National Disaster Management Authority has also been informed about the incident.
After meeting with the injured at the Kolkata Medical College, Gandhi described it as a great tragedy and urged the people to provide necessary support to them.
The Mumbai civic body asked all schools to remain shut and to ensure that the students were sent back home safely.
The severe cyclonic storm, which brought in its wake heavy rain coupled with gale wind till early Sunday, uprooted hundreds of trees and snapped cables in Kolkata and in the coastal districts of North and South 24 Parganas and East Midnapore, bring life to a near-halt.
People in coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh heaved a sigh of relief on Thursday as the third cyclonic storm in over a month, which was expected to cause extensive damage, weakened before it hit the state.
The CM urged all Malayalis to donate one month salary to rebuild the state, where the death toll has now touched 302.
"On August 16 night, just as we reached an abandoned government hospital for rest after four days of non-stop work, the local police officer, villagers and NDRF (National Disaster Response Force) officials came to us, asking to save the life of a woman who had just given birth," he said.
Defence aircraft as also a couple of civilian ones ferried people to Delhi and Hyderabad since morning even as the Indian air Force flew sorties to bring more people to the naval base that has played a critical role in the overall operations.
The National Disaster Response Force on Friday intensified its relief and rescue operations in the rain and flood-battered Chennai and its adjoining areas as it added 20 more teams for the job and rescued over 10,000 people till now.
The human toll in the floods and relentless rain across the country reached almost 200 by Thursday, even as thousands in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Assam, Odisha, West Bengal, and elsewhere were forced out of their homes into temporary shelters.
The National Disaster Response Force, the Air Force and teams of other agencies have been pressed into service and they have so far rescued 214 stranded people. Over 6,200 people in the region have been shifted to safer places. Ten state highways and many roads have also been damaged.
At least 12 labourers were in the under-construction building and all of them are feared trapped, Chief Fire Officer Arun Kumar Singh said.
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