Thirty-Six Hours Before Landfall: A Shelter Decision at Puri
The district emergency office at Puri, on India's east coast at about 19.8°N, 85.8°E, receives a warning: a cyclone will make landfall within 36 hours with winds of 150 km per hour and a storm surge of about 3 metres. The village of Gadajit has 1,150 people, including 180 people over 65, 90 pregnant women, and about 300 cattle. Three shelters are available. Shelter 1 is a concrete school 4 km inland on a 6-metre mound, capacity 600, but its approach road crosses a creek that is under water at high tide. Shelter 2 is a single-storey panchayat building 1 km from the beach, capacity 900. Shelter 3 is a temple hall on high ground 9 km inland, capacity 400, with no toilets and no separate space for women. The tide will be high between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.; landfall is expected near midnight. The block has four buses and one tractor-trolley.
1. Rank the three shelters for use and justify the ranking with the figures given.
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Ranking: Shelter 1, then Shelter 3, then Shelter 2. Shelter 1 is the only building that is both above the surge and properly built: a 6-metre mound against a 3-metre surge gives about 3 metres of freeboard, the structure is concrete, and it is only 4 km away, so it is the primary site, though its capacity of 600 is barely half the village. Shelter 3 is on high ground and far enough inland to be safe, but 9 km, 400 places, no toilets and no separate space for women make it an overflow site, not a first choice - 90 pregnant women and the elderly need sanitation and privacy, and a shelter without them will be abandoned by exactly the people most at risk. Shelter 2 should not be used at all: a single-storey building 1 km from the beach would be under a 3-metre surge, so its 900 places are irrelevant - capacity that is under water is not capacity. The reasoning to display is that the first filter is safety (height above surge, distance, structure), and capacity and comfort are compared only among the options that pass it.
2. Plan the evacuation using four buses and one tractor-trolley, and explain why timing matters as much as the choice of shelter.
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The creek decides the timetable. Because the approach road to Shelter 1 is under water at high tide, everyone going there must cross before 4 p.m. So the plan runs in phases. By 8 a.m., announce the evacuation through the panchayat loudspeaker and the school. Phase one, from 10 a.m., moves the 180 elderly, the 90 pregnant women and children to Shelter 1 - they board first, because they cannot walk or wait. Phase two, from about 1 p.m., fills Shelter 1 to its 600 with the general population, all across the creek before high tide. Phase three, after 4 p.m., the creek is closed, so the remaining 550 must take the inland road to Shelter 3 (400 places), with about 150 accommodated in the pucca rooms on the same high ground as Shelter 1. The tractor-trolley carries fodder, water and the cattle to high ground; animals should not be brought into human shelters. All movement stops by dusk, since landfall is near midnight and roads will be under surge water. Timing reasoning: an evacuation that is correct but late is a failed evacuation.
3. A map-work question asks students to locate Puri and the water body to its east, and to explain why the east coast records more cyclone landfalls than the west. Write the reasoning they should use.
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Location reasoning from the coordinates: 19.8°N, 85.8°E puts the place on the east coast of India, in Odisha, south of the Tropic of Cancer and north of the Equator, with the Bay of Bengal lying to its east. The map should show the state outline, the coastline running roughly north-east to south-west, and the Bay. The explanation has to be geographic, not a list. The Bay of Bengal is warm and relatively shallow, with sea-surface temperatures above about 26.5°C during the post-monsoon months, so low-pressure systems that form there intensify quickly. Its shallow continental shelf lets the water pile up, turning wind into a high storm surge - exactly the 3 metres in the warning. There is no high mountain barrier between the sea and the coastal plain, so the surge runs far inland, and the deltas of the Ganga, Mahanadi and Godavari put densely settled low land directly in its path. The west coast is comparatively sheltered: the Arabian Sea is cooler and narrower, and the Western Ghats stand close behind the shore. A good answer names the state, the sea and the two physical reasons.