315 Fishermen Return After India Cyclone

Fishing boats carrying more than 300 men reached safety six days after a cyclone ravaged southeast India’s coastline, but almost 1,000 others were still missing, Andhra Pradesh state officials said Tuesday.

“Three hundred fifteen fishermen have been found, 985 are still missing,” said Vijay Kumar, a senior official coordinating relief operations from Hyderabad, the state capital.

Before news that some boats had come ashore, officials had said they feared the cyclone death toll could top 2,000.

The storm whipped up 112-mph winds and 10-foot-high tidal waves that swept across coastal areas last Wednesday night.

Kumar said earlier reports from an Indian news agency that 1,000 men had been found were incorrect but that all hope of finding them had not yet been abandoned.

The missing fishermen set sail from the coast of East Godavari and West Godavari districts just before the cyclone zeroed in on their villages.

Hopes of finding them alive had faded after air and sea searches failed to sight their boats.

At Etimoga village near the port town of Kakinada, the district headquarters of East Godavari, women and children waited in the hope that some 780 relatives had survived the cyclone and would return.

State Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu told a village gathering that helicopters and coast guards were making every effort to locate the missing men. The assurance had little effect on the crowd.

Malladi Dhanalaxi, 40, whose four brothers were among the missing, wept inconsolably.

“I don’t think they will ever come back,” she wailed.

Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda described the disaster in one of India’s most prosperous farming areas as a national calamity.

Relief camps are sheltering 179,000 people whose homes have been destroyed or badly damaged. Medical teams are treating the injured, mostly for broken bones, and inoculating evacuees against waterborne diseases such as cholera.

Officials said the cyclone had affected nearly 4 million people out of a 10-million population in the two districts.