The very severe cyclonic storm ‘Lehar’ over west-central and adjoining south Bay of Bengal moved west-northwestward and lay centred at about 570 kms east-southeast of Machilipatnam and 510 kms southeast of Kakinada. All the nine coastal districts are on high alert as the system would move west-northwestwards and cross Andhra Pradesh coast near Machilipatnam around tomorrow afternoon.

Under its influence, rainfall would commence at many places in coastal Andhra Pradesh from today evening. The intensity would gradually increase with rainfall at most places with heavy to very heavy falls at a few places and isolated extremely heavy falls on 28th November.

Around 2.5 lakh people from the seven districts of Guntur, Krishna, East and West Godavari, Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam will be evacuated to relief camps. A DIG of National Disaster Relief Force, NDRF, has been deputed to the State to supervise and monitor the deployment of NDRF teams. Thirty NDRF teams were being deployed and additional teams were being moved from Chennai, Bhubaneswar and Pune.

In the wake of cyclone ‘Lehar’ changing its course and heading towards Machilipatnam, the government is deploying more NDRF teams to Krishna district extending the services of two columns of Army to both Krishna and Guntur districts. Officials in coastal mandals have been asked to remain on high alert and take adequate measures to minimise loss of lives and property.