As Gujarat braces for Cyclone Tauktae, 1.5 lakh people evacuated from coastal areas

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Also, to take care of uninterrupted oxygen supply 35 green corridors have been created.

“Evacuation has been ordered for citizens residing in kutcha houses too from interior areas and along river banks. Till now, 1.5 lakh persons have been evacuated,” the CM stated.

The evacuation operations are on in 655 villages of 17 districts to be affected by the cyclone.These districts are Porbandar, Amreli, Junagadh, Gir Somnath, Botad, Bhavnagar, Devbhoomi Dwarka, Kutch, Jamnagar, Rajkot, Mori, Valsad, Surat, Vadodara, Bharuch, Navsari, Anand and Ahmedabad.

As per the India Meteorological Department (IMD’s) bulletin, the extremely severe cyclonic storm “Tauktae” over eastcentral Arabian Sea moved north-northwestwards and lay centred at 0830 hours IST of today, over eastcentral Arabian Sea near latitude 18.8°N and longitude 71.5°E, about 150 km west of Mumbai, 220 km south-southeast of Diu, 260 km southeast of Veraval (Gujarat).

Rupani said that power breakup arrangements including mandatory gen set along with diesel stock have been arranged in all over 1400 Covid hospitals across the state. “We have made alternate arrangement at all hospitals in case of power supply is affected. As many as 661 teams of electricity department teams who are working around the clock have been deployed. Also, power backups arranged at 1428 places. 174 ICU on wheels have been put on stand-by, 607 vehicles of 108 ambulance service on stand-by as a part of special care arrangements for Covid patients,” the CM stated adding that 444 teams of health department too have been deployed across the state.

So far, 750 cases of power breakup have been reported from the state, of which 400 have been resolved.

Further, 240 teams of forest department and 242 teams of road and buildings (R&B) department have been deployed to take immediate action to clear roads blocked due to felling of trees.

National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) 41 teams and 10 State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) teams deployed in most affected districts. Additionally, 319 teams of revenue department have been deployed to take immediate action.

Arrangements of 456 de-watering pumps have been put on stand-by position to pump out water from low lying areas in case of heavy rainfall. Also, 2126 hoardings removed from urban areas and 643 from rural areas along with 668 temporary structures from across the state.

Till Monday morning, 84 talukas of 21 districts have witnessed moderate rainfall. Out of these, 6 talukas have recorded 1 inch rainfall.

While control rooms are operational 24×7, social service organisations and other agencies have been roped in for assisting the state government teams.