Cabinet secretary Ajit Seth left to his home relieved on early the Sunday morning, after spending night in his office along with home secretary Anil Goswami. The two senior most officials were supervising evacuation plans and working out joint strategies among various agencies and the state governments of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh to minimize the damage caused by the cylone Phailin. Much to their relief, the cyclone casualties were restricted to 15, against 10,000 in 1999.

The government is receiving kudos from international organisations as well for massive preparedness, speedy evacuation plans and almost accurate prediction of time and path.

Counting losses Though the cyclone has weakened now, it has left a trail of destruction. Odisha government estimates loss of Rs2,400 crore to standing crops as waters have swept five lakh hectares of farm land. “Cyclone is estimated to have affected 5 lakh hectares of rice paddy crop, which is one seventh of total area of paddy field in the state,” said RS Gopalan, director of agriculture and food production, Orissa. There is fear of floods now as the officials had released some amount of water from the Hirakud dam at Sambalpur (Odisha) that had reached its full capacity.

Early reports put out by the Action Aid, an international relief group have estimated damage to crops, nets, boats, kuccha (non-cemented) houses and other small infrastructure appears extensive. “Over 30,00,000 trees have been uprooted, electricity and communication lines have been damaged. Over 2 lakh (2,30,000) houses have been damaged in Ganjam alone,” said Ghasiram Panda, programme manager of ActionAid India.

Focus on rehabilitation Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik said the primary aim was to minimise loss of human lives and they have successfully managed to do so. “Property to the tune of several crores has been damaged...Rehabilitation will now be done,” he said. Patnaik said the damage caused to roads in the light of cyclone would be restored within 24 hours, while power in the state would be restored within 36 hours. Official sources said here that prime minister Manmohan Singh is personally monitoring the situation and has directed central agencies to extend “full support” to the state governments in restoring normalcy in the aftermath of the cyclone.

Health concernAfter preparing well to shift the people to safer places, the government now has to face challenges to save them from any possible spread of epidemic. According to experts, to prevent spread of any epidemic government must ensure clean supply of water as all natural resource of water has been contaminated and polluted after the cyclone. “Water-borne diseases easily spread among large section of population and it must be on priority of health official and government cleans the contamination. Individual and local authorities store other things but it is impossible to store water,” said former health secretary, government of India, P Hota.

Alongwith the contaminated water, other major concern is carcass of dead animal. Delay in removal of carcass lead to spread of diseases. Hota said that numbers of dead animal would came out later on but the removal of carcass must be done at earliest to save people from outbreak of any diseases.