Cyclone Michaung: Visuals from Chennai show cars floating as roads get inundated with water as Michaung Cyclone gears up to hit northern Tamil Nadu on Monday forenoon. Social media users have shared visuals from the waterlogged streets of the state as well as the airport.
Social media users have said that “merciless” rain in a span of 12 hours have inundated their residential areas. Some other videos show heavy winds blowing, while some show vast swathes of land under water.
Cyclone Michaung, which is predicted to make landfall in southern Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday, has hit northern Tamil Nadu today. Due to this, the Tamil Nadu government has announced a public holiday on December 4, and urged private companies to consider ‘work from home’ option for its employees. As many as 118 trains have been cancelled due to the inclement weather.
The state government has deployed disaster response force personnel and made arrangements with additional inventory such as 3,00,000 electricity poles, machinery such as cranes and requisite vehicles.
Many people in the vulnerable areas of the state have been reallocated to relief camps. The Tamil Nadu government has housed 685 people from vulnerable areas in 11 relief camps. In Chennai alone, 162 relief centres have been readied.
Control rooms have been set up and 14 state disaster response teams comprising 350 personnel and nine National Disaster Response Force teams of 225 personnel have been stationed in coastal regions. The government has also released the following helpline numbers:
Cyclone Michaung is expected to move northwards from hereon and cross south Andhra Pradesh coast between Nellore and Machilipatnam tomorrow.