Cyclones cause Rs 618 crore loss to Nellore

Nellore: The members of Central team also visited Nellore district for assessing the rain losses occurred due to Nivar and Burevi cyclones. The team Dr Ponnuswamy, Sravan Kumar Singh and RP Dubey interacted with the district collector K V N Chakradhar Babu and other senior officials on the losses.

The collector explained to the team members about department wise losses through a Power Point presentation. He said that 177 villages and 8 towns in the district suffered a huge loss due to heavy rains and gales. 24,702 hectares of agricultural lands, 3,043 hectares of horticulture crops damaged due to natural calamity, he informed.

Paddy, red gram, green gram, banana, chillies and papaya were the major crops that received losses. The total loss estimated as Rs 618.53 crore, the Collector said adding that people from 17,163 low-lying areas were shifted to 155 rehab centres during the cyclone Nivar and provided food and shelter to them.

4 NDRF teams consisting of 62 members, 2 SDRF teams with 45 members were stationed at various places for protecting the people from unforeseen incidents, Chakradhar Babu said. They had arranged round-the-clock control room and monitoring by the senior officials at vulnerable places to prevent the loss of lives during the two calamities.

The district administration arranged a photo exhibition on rain loss also.

Joint Collector M N Harendira Prasad, in-charge DRO Nagalakshmi, ZP CEO Suseela, Joint Director of Agriculture C Ananda Kumari and others were present.