An eight-member inter-ministerial central team on Tuesday assessed damage caused by extreme rain linked to Cyclone Arnab in Odisha’s Gajapati district, where 847 wards across 130 panchayats were affected and 1,232 houses were damaged in preliminary estimates.
The team arrived at Paralakhemundi and visited Mohana and other affected areas. It inspected a damaged bridge at Gundriguda and a damaged culvert at Khariaguda, while also assessing losses to standing crops at Kesara and Singipur.
The inspection covered landslides and road damage along the route from Koinpur to Gangabad via Terava and Chitrango. According to Gajapati collector Akshay Sunil Agrawal, the district administration has identified 147 landslide-prone areas. Thirteen landslides occurred during the period of heavy rain.
The collector told the visiting team that 35,014 people had been evacuated from vulnerable pockets and moved to safer locations. The assessment is intended to document the extent of damage to homes, transport links, agricultural land and other local infrastructure.
Cyclone Arnab made landfall in Andhra Pradesh on October 28, but its associated extreme rain affected several districts in southern Odisha. Ganjam, Gajapati and Kandhamal bore the brunt of the weather, with massive landslides, disrupted communication, damaged bridges and culverts, and breaches in river embankments reported from the region.
The reported impact has also included loss of life. Three people died in Kandhamal, two in Ganjam and one in Gajapati, according to the report. In Ganjam alone, standing paddy crops on more than 90,000 hectares were reportedly damaged. The district had cultivated paddy on 2.16 lakh hectares during the kharif season, official sources said.
The central team is scheduled to visit Ganjam on Wednesday, where the damage has been described as the most severe among the affected districts. The visit will extend the assessment of the rain-related losses and the disruption to roads, bridges, communications, farmland and settlements.
