Cyclone Phailin: We must all follow lessons Patnaik learned from 1999

The devastation caused by the 1999 supercylone was taken as a lesson by the Odisha government with great success. Much well-deserved praise has been heaped upon Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik and his government’s bureaucrats for a crisis handled exceedingly well, with casualties from Phailin minimised and rehabilitation efforts already initiated. But if that disaster was a lesson for the local administration, it’s perhaps all the more reason that this weekend’s tremendously successful preventive evacuation and other efforts by the same state government be taken not as a model template but as an important milestone on the learning curve, not as a congratulatory note to the Naveen Patnaik government but as an indicator of what other successes may be achieved in future disasters. Clearly, in the aftermath of 1999, Odisha has learnt several critical lessons on disaster management – the floods of 2011 saw about 100 casualties but it was clear even then that small steps had been taken towards better weather monitoring, formalising standard operating procedures, coordination among various agencies, mass evacuations, preparation of cyclone relief spaces and more – all factors that led to the government minimising casualties caused by Phailin. Writing in The Indian Express, Member of Parliament Baijayant Jay Panda argues that the one thing that stood out the most amid the devastation left behind by the super cyclone of 1999 was the ineptitude of the state government, which “appeared unprepared and taken mostly by surprise”.