"Indian disaster teams have begun a relief operation after Cyclone Phailin crashed into eastern areas, forcing up to one million people to flee. Officials are assessing the damage and providing food to hundreds of thousands who spent the night in shelters. The cyclone wrecked many coastal homes, uprooted trees and blocked roads in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa states. Five deaths have so far been linked to the cyclone, far fewer than were initially feared. In 1999 a cyclone killed more than 10,000 people in Orissa. But the authorities said they were better prepared this time. The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder in Berhampur, Orissa, says the authorities made massive effort to get the message out to people, many of whom were reluctant to leave their homes. He says their efforts appear to have paid off....But officials were confident that a massive loss of life had been avoided. "We were preparing for a super cyclone, but Phailin did not turn into a super cyclone," disaster official Tripti Parule told the AFP news agency. He said the evacuation was the biggest in India's history for such an event."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-24510464" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The last time a major hurricane hit Jamaica, only a couple of people died in a country of nearly three million. Like India, Jamaica have mastered the best way of minimising casualties against hurricanes and cyclones.
India has successfully evacuated a million people from a hurricane/cyclone zone. There are lessons here for so-called First World countries who have had difficulty minimising death tolls during a hurricane strike. The United States could learn a lot from countries like India and Jamaica in this regard. India do evacuations better than the Americans do, and Jamaicans are better at turning off public services that can kill during these storms, such as electricity, than Americans. As a result, the death tolls in countries such as India and Jamaica are much lower when hurricanes/cyclones strike than the US.
Yes, the US hardly gets hit by these superstorms, when compared to the Caribbean and South Asia, but it also stands to reason that the US would be well-advised to call in experts from countries such as India and Jamaica, because they have handled these storms much better than the Americans have, due to this experience. However, there is still this First World prejudice against countries who have dark-skinned people, because there's a reluctance to believe that they can actually master their responses to something like hurricanes and cyclones better than the most powerful country in the world....
