IndiaRescue ships recover 26 bodies of offshore workers and 49 still missing after storm bringing 180km/h winds leaves trail of destruction
Guardian staff and agencies
Wed 19 May 2021 20.35 EDT
The number of fatalities from a major cyclone on Indias west coast has jumped to at least 91 and the navy was searching for another 49 people missing at sea after a barge carrying offshore workers sank in the storm.
Cyclone Tauktae, which left a trail of destruction after sweeping in from the Arabian sea on Monday, is the latest storm in what experts say is a growing number of ever-bigger storms in the region because of climate change warming its waters.
The Indian defence ministry said on Wednesday night that navy ships, surveillance aircraft and helicopters had combined to rescue more than 600 people after waves up to eight metres (26ft) high hammered offshore oil installations.
Naval personnel help injured workers rescued from an offshore barge in the Arabian sea. Photograph: INDIAN NAVY/AFP/Getty Images
But 26 bodies were also recovered while planes and helicopters were still searching for 49 workers missing from one of several support vessels that slipped its moorings in the storm and sank.
MK Jha, head of the navys western command, said the sea was so rough that they could not board life rafts.
Those rescued have hope in their eyes but certainly, they are distressed… they have been battered by the sea conditions for multiple hours, Jha told the NDTV news channel.
We are lucky to be alive, one crew member told AFP after he disembarked from a navy destroyer in Mumbai.
The Indian navy was a godsend for us. They arrived in the nick of time. We were clinging onto the barge and luckily the life jackets helped us as the water was going over our head, he added.
Others said they jumped from the vessel when they realised all eight anchors had broken in the ferocious storm.
Lightning over Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, as Cyclone Tauktae crossed the country. Photograph: Indian Photo Agency/REX/Shutterstock
In a second operation, a navy helicopter rescued 35 crew members of another barge, which ran aground north of Mumbai, a government statement said.
Both barges were working for Oil and Natural Gas, the largest crude oil and natural gas company in India.
The company said the barges were carrying personnel deployed for offshore drilling and their anchors gave away during the storm. Indias biggest offshore oil rigs are located off Mumbai.
Navy helicopters also provided food and water to nearly 300 crew members of a support station and drilling ship that were being towed back to Mumbai by the companys support vessels, the statement said.
The government said on Wednesday night that it was launching an investigation into why the vessels had become stranded during the storm.
The disaster comes as India is in the grip of a devastating wave of the coronavirus pandemic which is claiming thousands of lives every day.
Even before the cyclone made landfall in Gujarat, with gusts up to 185km (115 miles) per hour, associated heavy rains and strong winds killed around 20 people in western and southern India.
Gujarat officials said on Wednesday that the death toll in the state after the storm had risen to 45, with many killed by collapsing houses or walls and more fatalities expected.
I have never experienced such intensity in my life, said a hotel owner in the town of Bhavnagar where the winds smashed windows on the seafront and sent trees and power lines toppling.
Indias prime minister, Narendra Modi, saw the damage caused by the cyclone by flying over the worst-hit areas and later met with state officials in Ahmedabad, a key city in western Gujarat.
Government is working closely with all the states affected by the cyclone, he tweeted.
The Hindu newspaper reported that more than 16,000 houses were damaged in Gujarat , while thousands of trees and electric poles were uprooted by the force of the wind.
The storm weakened into a depression on Wednesday centered over the south of Rajasthan and northern Gujarat, the Indian meteorological department said on Wednesday.
In neighbouring Nepal, authorities asked mountaineers to descend from high altitudes because the storm might bring severe weather.
Hundreds of climbers, guides and staff are trying to climb mountains in Nepal this month, when weather is usually the most favorable in the high altitudes. Nepal has eight of the worlds 14 highest peaks, including Mount Everest.
In 2014, snowstorms and avalanches triggered by a cyclone in India killed 43 people in Nepals mountains in the worst hiking disaster in the Himalayan nation.
Agence France-Presse and Associated Press contributed to this report.
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