How Do You Save a Million People From a Cyclone? Ask a Poor State in India

BHUBANESWAR, India — Flights were canceled.

Train service was out.

And one of the biggest storms in years was bearing down on Odisha, one of India’s poorest states, where millions of people live cheek by jowl in a low-lying coastal area in mud-and-stick shacks.

But government authorities in Odisha, along India’s eastern flank, hardly stood still. To warn people of what was coming, they deployed everything they had: 2.6 million text messages, 43,000 volunteers, nearly 1,000 emergency workers, television commercials, coastal sirens, buses, police officers, and public address systems blaring the same message on a loop, in local language, in very clear terms: “A cyclone is coming. Get to the shelters.”

[Update: “The worst is over”: A sigh of relief in India, mostly spared by cyclone.]

It seems to have largely worked. Cyclone Fani slammed into Odisha on Friday morning with the force of a major hurricane, packing 120 mile per hour winds. Trees were ripped from the ground and many coastal shacks smashed. It could have been catastrophic.

But as of early Saturday, mass casualties seemed to have been averted. While the full extent of the destruction remained unclear, only a few deaths had been reported, in what appeared to be an early-warning success story.

The most vulnerable people, it seemed, had gotten out of the way.

Experts say this is a remarkable achievement, especially in a poor state in a developing country, the product of a meticulous evacuation plan in which the authorities, sobered by past tragedies, moved a million people to safety, really fast.