Hyderabad: Even as severe cyclonic storm Laila weakened in to a deep depression and lay centred over land 100kms nort-west of Kakinada, the state government was busy assessing and counting the losses.
Many places in the coastal Andhra and Telangana regions were still receiving heavy to scattered rainfall on Friday.
The death toll in the widespread devastation caused by the tropical storm Laila has mounted to 25 with four people dying in a landslide in Vijaywada city late last night and two others drowning in Addanki in Prakasam district.
Victims of the landslide include two women and a two-year-old child.
Constable Mohammad Rafi was washed away when he tried to save a bus conductor Yanadi Rao. Both of them died.
Two people died in Guntur district when a tree was uprooted. Other deaths were reported from Nellore, Prakasam Guntur East and West Godavari.
The current environmental conditions and Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models suggest that the system was likely to weaken further and move in a north-northeasterly direction and re-emerge in the north Bay of Bengal.
Surveillance
"In that case, the system may intensify again over the sea. The system is therefore under constant watch," the latest IMD bulletin revealed.
More than a million people in three districts of Prakasham, Guntur and Krishna were left reeling after the cyclone crossed Andhra coast at Bapatla (Guntur district) on Thursday afternoon.
Gale-force winds with a speeds of up to 100km an hour roared and torrential rain continued in the region throughout the night.
Normal life was affected as highways and internal rods came under four feet of flood waters.
There was a 5km-long traffic jam near Ongole in Prakasham district on the Chennai-Kolkatta highway. Bus and train services remain suspended and thousands of people were stuck in different places.
State revenue minister Dharmana Prasad Rao said that 75,000 people were accommodated in 300 relief camps in the affected areas and many of them had started returning to their homes with the rain situation easing in some places.
The IMD had forecast that winds of up to 50-60 km an hour were likely to commence in Orissa and West Bengal yesterday and today. It also forecast that there will be enhanced rainfall with isolated heavy to very heavy showers likely in two states.
The IMD said that under the influence of the system, widespread rainfall with scattered heavy-to-very heavy rainfall was likely over the north coast of the Andhra and Telangana region over the next 12 hours.
It also forecast fairly widespread rainfall with isolated heavy-to-very heavy showers over south coastal Andhra and Orissa over the next 24 hours.
While three districts of Guntur, Prakasham and Krishna were lashed by heavy rain and gale winds, several places broke the rainfall record.
According to the Meteorological office, Addanki in Prakasham recorded the highest rainfall, with 55 centimetres of rain in less than four hours.
Chief Minister K. Rosaiah, who reviewed the situation with the minister and officials, asked the collectors of the coastal district to remain alert for another 48 hours in view of the continuing rain. He asked the medical and health departments to take all the possible measures to prevent the outbreak of epidemics.
Apart from the civil administration, the Indian army, navy and air force and the 1,200 personnel of the National Disaster Response Force were also involved in relief and rescue efforts.
Train services, which were badly hit over the last two days, have been restored at most of the places. South Central Railway has said that the services will return to full normalcy starting tomorrow.
The state revenue minister said crops over an area of 5,800 hectares were damaged while the fish and aqua-culture industry was badly hit.
