Cyclone Dana: Flight, train services resume in West Bengal

Flight services at the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata resumed on Friday morning an hour before the end of the scheduled 15-hour closure period.

Similarly, the train services from Sealdah division of Eastern Railways which were kept suspended from 8 P.M. since Thursday also resumed a little after 10 A.M. on Friday.

The closure of the airport was done as a precaution after Cyclone Dana made landfall in Odisha in the wee hours of Friday.

The schedule of the suspension of flight operations was from 6 P.M. on Thursday to 9 A.M. on Friday.

However, as per latest information available, after a survey of the situation, the airport authorities decided to resume flight operations at 8 A.M.

Sources said the first flight that took off from Kolkata airport on Friday morning was destined for Imphal.

Similarly, the first flight to arrive here was from New Delhi.

Since Thursday, all precautions have been taken at Kolkata Airport to prevent waterlogging on the runway.

High-power pumps were put in place there to flush out the accumulated water as and when required.

Train services from Sealdah division of Eastern Railways which were kept suspended from 8 P.M. since Thursday also resumed a little after 10 A.M. on Friday.

“Train services from this division will continue as per schedule from now onwards,” an Eastern Railways official said.

However, the rush of commuters in the suburban trains so far had been lesser on Friday than it used to be on normal days.

No fresh announcement of cancellation of long-distance trains, apart from those already announced as cancelled earlier, was made.

Meanwhile, sources from the state government said that after spending the night at the state secretariat Nabanna monitoring the landfall situation in the state, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had become active again from Friday morning taking stock of the situation amid heavy showers in different pockets in the state as an after-effect of the landfall.

“She is constantly interacting with the District Magistrates and the nodal officers in the districts where the rainfall is high, especially at the two coastal districts of East Midnapore and South 24 Parganas. A number of Cabinet members have been instructed to reach out to the people at the affected areas and supervise relief operations. Similar instructions have also been given to our party MLAs,” said a member of the state Cabinet.