Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday took charge of the disaster management control room on the second floor of Nabanna, spending hours monitoring the Amphan cyclone situation and passing on instructions to senior officials.
The chief minister left her 14th floor chamber and entered the control room — set up with over 25 computers and multiple phone lines — around 2.35pm, when Amphan made landfall at Sagar Island.
“Till late in the evening, she was there.... She was directly in touch with the district magistrates of South 24-Parganas, North 24-Parganas and East Midnapore. On getting inputs from the ground, she was passing on instructions to them and also chief secretary Rajiva Sinha and home secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay, who were also with her at the control room,” said a source.
According to the source, a worried chief minister was heard mumbling “chardike dhangsho cholchhe (it’s destruction all around)”.
The district magistrate of South 24-Parganas, P. Ulaganathan, gave her the first bad news when he informed her around 2.40pm that the cyclone had just started making landfall on Sagar Island and was “devastating in nature”.
“The wind speed is about 165kmph on Sagar Island. We are monitoring the situation from Kakdwip control room,” Ulaganathan told the chief minister.
The chief minister instructed the DM to monitor the situation closely and kept reminding him that he should ensure that nobody goes out as the tail of the cyclone was yet to hit.
Phone lines kept ringing and disaster management team officials, who were in touch with the Met office as well, remained glued to the computer screens. News of devastation began pouring in.
The North 24-Parganas DM, Chaitali Chakraborty, informed the chief minister that the cyclone was creating havoc in Basirhat sub-division. “We have rescued nearly 80,000 people. But several trees have fallen in the area,” the DM told the chief minister.
When East Midnapore district magistrate Partho Ghosh was contacted, he informed the chief minister that the cyclone had passed Digha without leaving any major impact.
“But it is wreaking havoc in Haldia and Nandigram,” Ghosh told her, giving a brief account of the devastation.
After taking note of the ground situation, the chief minister started giving instruction to the officials. She first asked the chief secretary to cut the power supply in districts where the cyclone was likely to have a devastating impact.
“Ask them to cut the power supply in these areas to avoid a major mishap,” the chief minister asked Sinha.
The chief minister then called chairman of board of administrators in Calcutta Municipal Corporation, Firhad Hakim, and came to know that trees were uprooted in several places in the city. But the chief minister promptly asked Hakim not to send people to clear roads as it could be life-threatening for them.
“Don’t send your men to remove the trees. Their lives would be at risk as the storm is yet to lose its steam.… The tail could be more devastating. We have to be careful till 10pm,” the chief minister told Hakim.
Mamata later told officials: “We have evacuated more than 5 lakh people this time. I must say the administration has done a good job by evacuating so many people. We had evacuated about 1.8 lakh people during Bulbul.”
