What's the article about?
- It talks about how the disastrous impacts of cyclones can be effectively tackled with proper planning and preparedness by the administrations.
Relevance:
- GS3: Disaster and Disaster Management;
- GS1: Important Geophysical Phenomena such as earthquakes, Tsunami, Volcanic activity, cyclone etc.,
Analysis:
- The Cyclone Mandous, which had its landfall near Mamallapuram, did not cause much damage.
- It was termed as a “textbook cyclone” by the IMD – it crossed the coast with all the attendant features of a typical tropical cyclone.
|
Cyclone Mandous:
What are tropical cyclones:
Read more: Tropical cyclones are becoming more common in the Arabian Sea |
- This Cyclone Mandous was similar to Cyclone Vardah of December 2016. But Cyclone Mandous event dumped heavy rainfall that was far more than what occurred under Vardah.
- This time, not only parts of north Tamil Nadu but also areas in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh experienced heavy rainfall.
- But loss of life and other damages were very less this time. This is due to the way by which the official machinery in Tamil Nadu steered the disaster management system.
- Despite the cyclone crossing the coast at almost midnight and causing a number of trees and structures to fall, the response of the administration was swift and the common man’s life hardly disrupted.
- Learning from the past mistakes, the Tamil Nadu government has been paying greater attention this time to improving the storm-water drain network and such other works.
- The State government’s coordination with the Meteorological Department and its preparedness in tackling the post-landfall situation made a difference to the situation this time. Otherwise, as in the past, citizens would have suffered even in light rain.
- Technology too, both in terms of forecast and information dissemination, has been playing a key role.
|
India Meteorological Department (IMD):
|
Way Forward:
- The authorities, i.e., the State government and the Meteorological department should continuously work to improve their ways of functioning, making use of technology, and helping people to be ready to face a natural disaster of this nature or even of greater strength.
- Ideally, the official machinery should set a goal of ensuring no loss to life. Such a task would not be impossible, given the availability of resources, both hardware and software, and empirical data on cyclones and severe cyclones crossing the coast of Tamil Nadu.
