Cyclone Fani was a devastating storm for parts of India. According ReliefWeb.int, it was one of the worst cyclones to hit the country of India since 1999. The Category 4-level storm made landfall in the Indian state of Odisha on May 3rd, 2019. In 1999, this same region killed nearly 10,000 people. Lessons learned from that storm, the preventive actions and evacuations likely saved numerous lives. According to that ReliefWeb.int article, 16 deaths have been attributed to Cyclone Fani so far. While direct loss of life was relatively low, society-altering secondary impacts from Cyclone Fani remain. Massive power outages are still a part of the landscape, and NASA satellite technology is revealing the extent.
According to the TheHindu.com, Cyclone Fani damaged over 11,000 distribution transforms, 75 high power transmission towers, and 84,000 low tension power lines. State Energy Secretary Hemant Sharm told The Hindu:
The power infrastructure has suffered massive damage. To bring it back to its earlier shape, it will take two months, but we are focusing on emergency restoration system, which will be completed in a fortnight
The images herein were provided by NASA. Specifically, they are from the satellite. This particular satellite has an instrument that can detect light between the visible green and near-infrared. This feature is often used to detect city lights, fires, and even reflected moonlight. The image above reveals outages in Bhubaneswar, the capital and one of the largest cities waiting the region. Officials report that only a small percentage of residents have power. The image below is from the second largest city in the state of Odisha, Cuttack.
Such damage is not surprising. My University of Georgia colleague Professor Deepak Mishra posted in social media as Cyclone Fani made landfall,
Cyclone Fani made landfall in my city, Puri. The images and videos coming out of Puri/BBSR are mind-boggling.
The storm was a Category 4 cyclone with 120 mile per hour (200 km/hr) winds. The state of Odisha is a coastal community and represents one of India's poorest socio-economic regions. As I have previously written in scholarly and popular writing, vulnerability to storms like Cyclone Fani is related to exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. Exposure is the contact or experience with the storm, for example. Sensitivity represents the level of impact that the weather or climate related event has on people and their communities. Adaptive capacity (also called resilience) is a measure of how able the people or communities are to "bounce back" from an event like Cyclone Fani. It is such vulnerability, which often creates what I call the "weather gap." I borrow this terminology from disproportionate disparities we often see because of "income gaps."
Cyclone Fani destroyed much of the energy infrastructure, but because of the high percentage of vulnerable communities, millions of people have been left homeless in cities like Cuttack, Khurda, Bhubaneswar, and Puri. Millions of people were also left without power without the storm, and some of them may not have it restored for weeks.
Closer to the U.S., we have numerous lessons about the negative impacts of power losses because of hurricanes. According to Peter Asmus writing in Forbes, recent hurricanes have been exemplars with "the average citizen (in Puerto Rico) going 84 days without electricity following Hurricane Maria in September 2017." Beyond inconvenience, critical food storage, healthcare, and occupational activities depend on power. However, the most vulnerable populations, by definition, always suffer residual consequences. I challenge you to consider the number of people that rely on power for dialysis, heart procedures, food storage, and so forth.
Asmus argues in Forbes that nations like the U.S. and India must use post-Maria or post-Fani lessons to fundamentally reinvent their power grids. That conversation certainly should be had, but for now, let's hope the good people of India have their power back soon.
