Cyclone Dana lashes Odisha coasts

The severe cyclonic storm Dana tonight slammed into Bhitarkanika and Dhamra coasts of the eastern Indian state of Odisha where authorities evacuated a million people to safety, shut schools and suspended flight and train operations.
The landfall process of the cyclone with a wind-speed of 110km per hour was expected to continue till today morning, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said.
Around 12:30am (local time), the storm moved north-northwest at a speed of 15kmh over the past six hours before making landfall between Bhitarkanika in Kendrapara district and Dhamra in Bhadrak district, a senior IMD official said.
“The landfall started with the entry of the outer cloud mass of the system. When the centre of the system reaches land, the wind speed is expected to reach 120 kmph,” Umashankar Das, a senior scientist at the Regional Meteorological Centre in Bhubaneswar, said.
The landfall process will last for nearly five hours till Friday morning, Das added.
The IMD issued a ‘red warning’ for heavy to very heavy rainfall in seven districts of Odisha Mayurbhanj, Cuttack, Jajpur, Balasore, Bhadrak, Kendrapara, and Jagatsinghpur.
Authorities in Odisha and West Bengal cancelled more than 400 trains and suspended flight operations in Bhubaneshwar and Kolkata  airports in view of the cyclone.
Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi said his government was fully prepared to cope with any situation and took adequate measures to mitigate the cyclone’s impact.
Odisha’s neighbouring state’s West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the administration identified over 3.5 lakh people to be evacuated from low-lying areas of the state in the wake of cyclone Dana.
She said 2,43,374 people have taken shelter in camps.
The Bengal CM said that she would be staying the entire Thursday night at the state secretariat and personally monitor the situation.