AA Edit | Extreme Weather Events: Be Ready
India’s experience in dealing with the northeast monsoon in which cyclones cause far more damage than steady to intense rainfall may have helped it largely in planning and preparation to mitigate the problem, at least in terms of loss of lives
Widespread flooding during hurricanes and cyclones is becoming more frequent and intense as the Earth’s climate changes. Drenching rain and consequent flooding have hit southeast Asia so hard this year that they caused more than 1,000 deaths across Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka and claimed a few lives in rain-related events in Malaysia and Tamil Nadu.
The season of storms, with Senyar and Ditwah raging, may have been most severe on Sumatra and Sri Lanka where they say they have never experienced such difficulties in rescue operations as landslides became as common as flooding in both urban as well as rural areas.
Southern India, especially Tamil Nadu, was spared much of the intensity with which it rained in neighbouring countries but there was substantial crop damage in Tamil Nadu where more than 57,000 hectares of farmland with standing crops damaged.
India’s experience in dealing with the northeast monsoon in which cyclones cause far more damage than steady to intense rainfall may have helped it largely in planning and preparation to mitigate the problem, at least in terms of loss of lives. Evacuating lakhs of vulnerable people on the coast in the face of advancing storms has been an exercise that southern states from Odisha downwards, have been accustomed to.
With the large urban centres along the Coromandel Coast like Chennai and Puducherry, spared from wind shear, high tides and excessive rainfall as Ditwah weakened into a depression even as it fizzled out when heading north, the damage was contained. But not without precautions being taken diligently with the resourceful National Disaster Response Force sending well-equipped teams to vulnerable areas quickly.
Indian weather forecasters may have been a tad overeager in putting out their colour-coded rainfall intensity warnings, but their leaning towards caution is in public interest as governments must respond with elaborate arrangements, including setting up call centres as well as control rooms. It is the only way to go when a clear pattern of global warming-induced climate change is making every weather event more extreme than the one before.