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Agartala, May 17: Three persons, one of them a woman, were killed while 10 others, including women and children, were injured and at least a thousand houses were damaged in a cyclonic storm that struckKalyanpur in Khowai subdivision and large parts of Teliamura subdivision in Tripura late last night.
The storm lasted a little over half-an-hour but its intensity left a trail of devastation, including uprooted trees, electric and telephone poles, almost totally disrupting communication links and power supply.
All the injured persons have been admitted to GB Hospital and the condition of at least four of them is stated to be critical. Relief operations supervised by SDOs of Teliamura and Khowai have commenced and dry food has been distributed among nearly 5,000 people who have taken shelter in schools, office buildings and temple premises.
Giving details of the death and destruction, Teliamura SDO K.N. Adhikari said after high heat and humidity all through yesterday, a cyclonic rainstorm, accompanied by frequent lightning, had struck areas under Teliamura subdivision and Kalyanpur under Khowai subdivision at 10.30 last night.
A middle-aged farmer, Durgacharan Chowdhury, 55, in the Chalitabari area in Khowai subdivision, had gone out of his thatched house to see if his cattle were safe but within seconds he was struck by lightning and died on the spot.
In the Raiya colony area in Khowai subdivision, Nihar Bala Das, 45, a housewife, was crushed under a big jackfruit tree which was uprooted in the storm. She was washing dishes in a pond and scurrying back to the house when the tree fell on her.
The third mishap took place near Mungia Kami village in the Barmura hill ranges when a shifting cultivator, Budhu Chandra Debbarma, had rushed out of his hut in a drunken fit and was blown by the wind a few feet before hitting a teak tree. He died on the spot.
“Ten persons sustained varying degrees of injuries in Raiya colony in Khowai subdivision, Hrangkhawalpara, Shilghati besides Mungia Kami in the Barmura ranges under Teliamura subdivision but we have not yet been able to collect their names and addresses. More than 5,000 people have left homeless as houses made of thatch, bamboo and mud wall collapsed,” said Adhikari.