India Continues Search for Victims of Deadly Cyclone

With only the clothes on their backs, hundreds of thousands of Indians left homeless by a devastating cyclone huddled in tent camps Friday as rescuers searched for bodies, brought in relief supplies and sought to prevent a cholera outbreak.

The death toll from Wednesday’s cyclone, which destroyed homes, crops and livestock in one of India’s most fertile regions, exceeded 1,000, state and relief officials said.

The search for more victims continued Friday. Among hundreds of people missing were dozens of fishermen working in the dangerous waters of the Bay of Bengal, a rough sea with high waves.

Relief helicopters carried in food, drinking water, medicine and clothing, and searched for the sick and wounded along the coastal stretch of southern India still inundated by rains and seawater.

“I am at a loss for words to describe the tragedy,” Chandrababu Naidu, chief executive of Andhra Pradesh state, told reporters after he flew over the disaster area in a helicopter.

Two districts in the state, east Godavari and west Godavari, were affected by the cyclone. A total of 5 million people live in the districts.

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“The most beautiful and fertile rice-growing district of east Godavari has turned into a burial ground,” Naidu said. “Except for houses made of brick and cement, nothing is standing there.”

The area of rice fields and banana and mango groves remained inaccessible by road.

Officials struggled to supply food to an estimated 500,000 stranded people. The state’s health department reported its first suspected cholera case, while the news agency United News of India said seven people were hospitalized in the worst-hit area, around Kakinada, with cholera symptoms.

United News said medical teams rushed to the area to check the further spread of cholera, caused by a bacteria that proliferates in contaminated water.

The state administration estimated crop and property losses of about $555 million--a staggering figure in a nation where the annual per capita income is less than $500.

The cyclone hammered the area for five hours Wednesday night with winds approaching 100 mph, flooding rice paddies and villages, ripping power poles from the ground and washing out roads. More than 10,000 homes were destroyed. About 200 tent camps were set up for 100,000 people, and more tents were being sent to the region.

“I have nothing left except the clothes I have on my body,” said Seetharama Raju at one relief camp.

Raju told a local journalist that he came to the camp after searching in vain for his wife, three sons and two daughters near his submerged farm in the village of Mummidivaram.

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Crop devastation was near total, said K.R. Kishore, the agriculture commissioner. Tons of threshed rice were swept away, and banana and sugar cane plantations were turned into swamps.

Chief Secretary M.S. Rajaji said at least 300 villages were under water.

Many of the fatalities happened when the mud walls of houses collapsed on the victims. Others drowned in flood waters. A passenger ferry sank with 42 people on board in the Godavari River. There were no survivors.