MOSCOW, October 13 (RIA Novosti) - At least eight people have been killed, mostly due to collapsing walls and falling trees, and up to 400,000 have been evacuated in eastern India as powerful cyclone Hudhud raged through the country on Sunday, according to AP reports.
Officials say that at least two people were killed in the coastal state of Andhra Pradesh in southeast India: a man who was hit by a falling tree and a woman who was crushed by a collapsing wall, according to A. R. Sukumar, the state’s disaster management commissioner. .Three more people were reported killed in Odisha. On Saturday, an overloaded government evacuation boat capsized in Andhra Pradesh after it hit a tree trunk, drowning a 6-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy, according to P. K. Mohapatra, the state’s special relief commissioner. A fisherman was killed while rescuing his boat at midnight on Saturday.
The cyclone brought heavy showers and strong gusts of wind, uprooting trees, disrupting electricity and bringing considerable damage to buildings and crops in the coastal districts. Rescue workers used helicopters, aircraft and ships to carry out relief operations and set up hundreds of shelters to house those who were evacuated.
On Monday, the storm was downgraded to a tropical depression, with wind speeds slowing to 70 kilometers per hour, considerably slower than on Sunday.
Another natural disaster lashed Asia over the weekend. At least 37 people were injured and 150,000 were told to evacuate when Typhoon Vongfong raged through Japan, hitting the island of Kyushu after battering the southern island of Okinawa.
The typhoon toppled trees, flooded streets and cut power to more than 60,000 homes. The Japanese Meteorological Agency said the typhoon could reach the Tokyo area by Tuesday, predicting that it would gradually lose strength and be downgraded to a tropical storm as it moves up the archipelago.
