Cyclone Yaas stormed through India’s west coast and neighbouring Bangladesh on May 27, killing nine people that included four children and leaving thousands of people homeless in its wake.
This cyclone came barely a week later on the heels of a similar cyclone – named Tauktae – that ravaged the West coast of India while leaving behind a trail of destruction and 155 deaths in its aftermath.
Witnessing the fury of Cyclone Tauktae, the authorities had managed to evacuate more than 1.5 million people in the eastern states of West Bengal and Odisha in preparation for Cyclone Yaas’ landfall.
However, this cyclone lashed the East Coast with torrential rain and howling winds gusting up to 155 kilometres (96 miles) an hour –the equivalent of a category two hurricane.
A full moon and higher-than-normal tide were responsible also for contributing to the Cyclone’s fury by creating massive waves that hammered the villages along the shores of the two countries.
The death toll included two people dead in West Bengal, two in Odisha and five in Bangladesh, officials said, adding that the southern areas of Bangladesh witnessed the sea smashed through water defences and inundated thousands of homes.
Over 300,000 homes were destroyed and thousands of people left marooned, while the government had arranged 14,000 cyclone centres to accommodate the affected people, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said, while describing the cyclone’s effect on sea level being abnormally towering waves that breached embankments in 135 places.
