KETI BANDAR: Life began returning to normal on Sindh’s coast after days of panic and preparations ahead of Biparjoy’s landfall, with the storm packing sustained winds of up to 125 kilometres per hour as it struck India’s Gujarat on Thursday, but then weakening overnight.
More than 180,000 people in Sindh and the neighbouring Indian state of Gujarat fled the path of Biparjoy — which means “disaster” in Bengali — before it made landfall.
Pakistan was largely spared of the storm’s effects and no lives were lost. However, water levels did increase in some coastal areas.
“Pakistan was prepared but largely spared the full force,” Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman tweeted on Friday morning. “Sindh’s coastal areas like Sujawal were inundated by high sea levels, but most people had been evacuated to safe ground.”
The authorities in Karachi on Friday lifted the ban on going into the open sea. In Thatta, around 50 kilometres inland, shops and markets gradually reopened under drizzling skies and a cool ocean breeze.
Biparjoy came ashore as a Category 1 cyclone at landfall after being Category 3 in the Arabian Sea. It weakened to a cyclonic storm and was expected to become a depression by Friday evening, the Pakistan Meteorological Department said.
However, it advised fishermen to refrain from venturing out into the open sea until the system was over by Saturday (today).
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah also said life was returning to normal in the areas along the country’s coastline as the danger posed by Biparjoy had been averted.
In the fishing port of Keti Bandar forecast to be hardest hit by the storm “there was zero damage”, according to an official from the Sindh provincial irrigation department.
A few shops have opened in the city as intruding seawater has started receding. Fishermen have gradually started returning to their bamboo-made abodes near the jetty in Keti Bandar, though after paying an economical cost and losing several days of their fishing-based income.