A cyclonic wind storm has killed at least one person in Kashmir Valley and caused extensive damage to properties and disrupting communications. Entire region has been plunged into darkness as the electricity service lines have been snapped and poles and towers uprooted.
Fear has overwhelmed the entire population and special prayer meetings are being held all over. At places, mosque loudspeakers were used to make pleas to the people to seek “forgiveness” from Allah for the sins they might have committed.
The windstorms started with an average speed of 24.7 knots on Monday evening have reached maximum speed of 40 knots and continued to lash the Valley till filing of this report on Tuesday evening.
The officials said that the minimum temperature increased by 12 degrees above normal, due to steep pressure gradient over the Valley causing a wind storm, which resulted in damage to properties, in the Valley, mostly blowing the tin-roofs of residential houses, uprooting trees and felling electricity and telephone poles.
One person, identified as Muhammad Maqbool, was killed when a branch of Chinar tree fell on him at Kachnambal of Kangan area in northern district of Ganderbal. A report from southern Qazigund said that a child died of suffocation.
As a precautionary measure dozens of families living in the Dal and Nagin lake areas of Srinagar have been evacuated to safer places.
Also, tourists staying in marooning houseboats on these lakes were evacuated to the shores, for their safety and accommodated in alternate hotels by the teams of State Disaster Response Force (SDRF).
At tourist resort of Pahalgam, about 100 km southeast of here, a tree fell on a tourist cottage resulting in damages to the hut. Sanjay Paul of Kolkotta received minor injury and was rescued and provided treatment at sub district hospital at Pahalgam itself.
The authorities on Tuesday ordered closure of schools all over the Valley whereas a few highways and roads were shut for vehicular traffic as a precautionary measure.
Chief minister Omar Abdullah, who chaired an emergency meeting, called to review the situation.
A worried chief minister tweeted on Tuesday evening: “If this wind does not die down, we are in for more damage tonight. I have never seen the Dal [lake] so choppy. It looks like a sea, not a lake.”