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India cyclone survivors return home to destruction

A villager attempts to repair his beachside hut after Cyclone Phailin made landfall at Padampeta Village/AFP

A villager attempts to repair his beachside hut after Cyclone Phailin made landfall at Padampeta Village/AFP

GOPALPUR, Oct 14- Hundreds of thousands of people who fled India’s strongest cyclone in 14 years returned to their destroyed homes and businesses Monday, as a massive relief operation kicked into gear.

One million people were forced to seek refuge in shelters and government buildings after the terrifying cyclone struck eastern India on Saturday, killing at least 18 people and leaving a trail of destruction along the coast.

Cyclone Phailin was dissipating rapidly after pounding the states of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, bringing winds of more than 200 kilometres an hour (125 miles per hour), uprooting trees, overturning trucks, and knocking out power lines.

Residents, some carrying their children and clutching bags of possessions, and who hours earlier were huddled in shelters, made their way back to their towns and villages fearing the worst.

“I left everything (behind) and when I came back nothing was here,” said Bhagwan, 50, who uses one name, a coconut seller from the hard hit Orissa town of Gopalpur, as he sat on the ground in front of his destroyed shop.

Some 600,000 people were left homeless in Orissa after the ferocious storm tore through thousands of villages, the state’s special relief commissioner, Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra, told AFP.

Many were poor fishermen and farmers living in mud and thatched dwellings, including in the worst affected area around Gopalpur, where the eye of Phailin came ashore.

“I lost my house and also a small shaving shop, I lost everything,” Janardan, 32, who uses one name, said from inside his tiny dwelling in Gopalpur. The cyclone collapsed the roof, leaving Janardan and his wife to begin the clean-up.

Mihir Ranjan Swain, the owner of a nearby roadside eatery, was also counting the cost of the storm.

“One night’s chaos has cost me nearly 200,000 rupees (3,250 dollars) worth damages,” he told AFP.

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“Now it will take me at least two months to recover all the losses and repair everything. At least all the people in the eatery were safe, nothing happened to them,” said Swain, standing next to a giant uprooted tree at the entrance of his eatery.

Seventeen people were killed in Orissa and one person further south in Andhra Pradesh, government and disaster management officials said.

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