Cyclone Biparjoy leaves six dead and trail of destruction in India and Pakistan

Cyclone Biparjoy became the longest-lasting storm on record in the Arabian Sea

Cyclone Biparjoy has finally weakened after wrecking havoc in western India and southern Pakistan this week, leaving at least six dead and a trail of destruction, meteorologists say.

Biparjoy, only the third tropical cyclone to strike western India in 60 years, intensified to a “very severe cyclonic storm” before making landfall in the Kutch region of Gujarat, close to the Pakistan border, on Thursday evening.

It prompted terrifyingly high tides, very heavy rains, thunderstorms and devastating gusts of winds in the state and neighbouring Pakistan’s Sindh province, with its impacts felt as far away as Mumbai and Balochistan.

Gujarat’s chief minister Bhupendra Patel claimed that there was no loss of life in the state due to the cyclone. However, two deaths have been reported in what officials say were cases related to weather events after Biparjoy made landfall.

The Associated Press said the dead included a man and his son who died when they tried to save their livestock in Gujarat state.

Around 23 people were also injured while more than 100 animals died since the storm made landfall. Earlier, four deaths were reported amid heavy winds and rains in Maharashtra and Gujarat while the storm was still out off the coast.

India and Pakistan evacuated over 180,000 people combined ahead of the storm’s landfall, as the cyclone left large swathes of coastal land inundated.

On Saturday morning people began returning to their homes, but the full scale of the damage in both countries is still being assessed.

The storm knocked out power in close to 1,000 villages, damaged houses, inundated roads and threw shipping containers into the sea.

Officials in Gujarat have started working on restoring damaged power lines and other repair works but the state still remains under weather alerts, according to the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), even though the storm has weakened into a depression off the coast.

Videos on social media show strong gusts of wind uprooting trees, flipping cars and blowing away roofs. Key roads and infrastructure was also damaged in Gujarat, which experienced the worst damage.

The storm brought windspeeds of 85 kph, gusting up to 105 kph through the coastal regions of western Gujarat.

Biparjoy was the first tropical cyclone posing a threat to India’s western coast in recent years and the first major disaster to hit the Sindh region of Pakistan since it suffered devasting floods last year that killed 1,700 people. Many survivors of that flooding were among those worst impacted by the heavy rains brought by Biparjoy.

The World Bank and international charities said they were still helping flooding victims in the region when the cyclone hit, and warned that the population remains highly vulnerable to back-to-back disasters.

“Pakistan has already faced a relentless string of disasters and economic setbacks in the past year,” said Arshad Muhammad, director of the charity Mercy Corps Pakistan, ahead of the landfall.

“Many are still displaced and increasingly vulnerable to storms like Cyclone Biparjoy.”

A volunteer distributes food items among children at a camp set up in a school building for internally displaced people from coastal areas, as Cyclone Biparjoy was approaching, in Badin, Pakistan's southern district in the Sindh province (AP)

Earlier, Unicef had estimated that some 625,000 children were at immediate risk in Pakistan and India.

“In Pakistan, Cyclone Biparjoy threatens a new crisis for children and families in Sindh, the province worst affected by last year’s devastating floods,” said Noala Skinner, Unicef’s regional director for South Asia.

The Indian Meteorological Department said Cyclone Biporjoy set a record for the longest lifespan of a storm over the Arabian Sea, lasting more than 10 days. Cyclone Kyarr in 2019 had a lifespan of nine days, it said.

Recent studies show tropical storms in the Arabian sea are getting stronger and wetter as the world continues to warm due to man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

A 2021 study found that the frequency, duration and intensity of cyclones in the Arabian Sea increased significantly between 1982 and 2019, and experts say the increase will continue as the world continues to warm.