14 bodies of the crew recovered from the Arabian sea
IT Correspondent
Mumbai, May 19:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday reached Bhavnagar in Gujarat to review the situation in the state in the aftermath of cyclone Tauktae, in which 13 people were reportedly killed on Monday through Tuesday.
Modi was received at airport by Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani. They proceeded for an aerial survey of Una, Diu, Jafarabad and Mahuva, an official said. After the survey, the PM is scheduled to hold a review meeting at Ahmedabad.
The cyclone made landfall in Gujarat on Monday, packing winds with speeds of 155-165 kilometers per hour, gusting to 190 km/hour. Later the cyclone storm weakened into a deep depression and lay centres over Saurashtra, about 60 km north-northeast of Ahmedabad on Tuesday night.
The cyclone pummelled parts of Gujarat and left behind a trail of destruction along the coast.
At least 13 people were killed, over 16,000 houses were damaged, and more than 40,000 trees and over 1,000 poles were uprooted in the storm. The Gujarat government had shifted over a lakh people living in coastal areas to safer places after the India Meteorological Department issued warnings of tidal waves and flooding following the cyclone
In the meanwhile nearly 14 bodies were recovered from the Arabian sea of the crew of the barge “P-305” which sank off Mumbai coast during the cyclonic storm on Monday evening.
The barge was deployed at the Heera platform, the largest of the Oil and Natural Gas Commission(OMGC)’s rigs in Bombay High, It was “out of control” for three days and help was sought from the Coast Guard. It sank on Monday evening in an extremely severe cyclonic storm with winds of 80-90 knots, wave heights of 6-8 meters, continuous rains, heavy clouding and almost zero visibility. It was an accommodation barge and had no engine to power it. It hit one of the oil rigs in the vicinity and resultantly the water gushed into it.
Out of 261 crew onboard the barge, the Indian Naval Ships “Beas”, “Betwa” and “Teg” which joined “INS Kochi” and “INS Kolkata” for undertaking SAR operations, rescued 180 crew members on Tuesday. The SAR was augmented with P8I and naval helicopters, who continued to undertake an aerial search in the area. The Barge P-305 was deployed by Afcons Infrastructure Limited, for a contract the company had got from ONGC.
