The hurricane-strength storm triggered by Cyclone Vardah that made a landfall near Chennai on December 12 has resulted in severe damage to the buildings and properties, uprooted trees, and electric poles thereby leading to power outages for hours in the city.
Besides damaging and paralyzing the city in terms of affecting the conveyance and transportation, cyclone Vardah also caused serious damages to the agricultural industry of the state.
The worst hit due to the cyclone was borne by the Vellore district. The Arakkonam and Nemili regions of the district ached the most. The destructive winds led to a loss of approximately 20,000 banana crops, additionally, close to 136 trees were uprooted and 573 electric poles came down crashing leading to power outages in the city.
The winds wreaked havoc in these two regions with close to 398 houses which include 295 huts were severely damaged. Out of these 295, 88 huts are reported to be damaged completely. The gusty winds also did not spare the tiled houses and close to 92 tiled houses out of which 3 houses completely were devastated.
The fury of the cyclone Vardah did not stop here, apart from taking 18 lives in Chennai, Kanchipuram and Tiruvallur, six cattle and 5,000 poultry were also killed.
The hurricane-strength storm triggered by cyclone Vardah also smashed the banana plantations, papaya groves, rice paddies and others. Though the exact estimation of crops destroyed by the cyclone is still under assessment, initial study shows that approx. 250 acres of land for banana crops were damaged in various parts of the district.
As per the sources, Regional Training Centre of Central Industrial Security Force at Thakkolam, also witnessed uprooting of 1500 trees.
The monetary loss calculated as per Assocham claims that Tamil Nadu has to bear a loss of approx. Rs. 6749 crores, ($ 1 billion).
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