The Great Derangement

by Amitav Ghosh

  It is very spooky indeed that this storm is not mentioned in the various academic studies I have dug up on storm surge risk in India.

  A quick Google search produced a number of references to an 1882 Bombay cyclone (some were even accompanied by pictures). There were several mentions of a death toll upward of one hundred thousand.

  The figure astounded me. Mumbai’s population then was about eight hundred thousand, which would mean that an eighth or more of the population would have perished: an extrapolation from these figures to today’s Mumbai would yield a number of over a million.

  But then came a surprise: Adam wrote to say that the 1882 cyclone was probably a hoax or rumor. He had not been able to find a reliable record of it; nor had any of the meteorologists or historians that he had written to. I then wrote to Murali Ranganathan, an expert on nineteenth-century Bombay, and he looked up the 1882 issues of the Kaiser-i-Hind, a Bombay-based Gujarati weekly run by Parsis. He found a brief description of a storm with strong winds and heavy rain on June 4, 1882, but there was no mention of any loss of life. Evidently, there was no great storm in 1882: it is a myth that has gained a life of its own.

  However, the search did confirm that colonial Bombay had been struck by cyclones several times in the past; the 1909 edition of the city’s Gazetteer even notes, “Since written history supplanted legend Bombay appears to have been visited somewhat frequently by great hurricanes and minor cyclonic storms.”

  Mumbai’s earliest recorded encounter with a powerful storm was on May 15, 1618. A Jesuit historian described it thus: “The sky clouded, thunder burst, and a mighty wind arose. Towards nightfall a whirlwind raised the waves so high that the people, half dead from fear, thought that their city would be swallowed up. . . . The whole was like the ruin at the end of all things.” Another Portuguese historian noted of this storm: “The sea was brought into the city by the wind; the waves roared fearfully; the tops of the churches were blown off and immense stones were driven to vast distances; two thousand persons were killed.” If this figure is correct, it would suggest that the storm killed about a fifth of the population that then lived on the archipelago.

  In 1740, another “terrific storm” caused great damage to the city, and in 1783 a storm that was “fatal to every ship in its path” killed four hundred people in Bombay harbor. The city was also hit by several cyclones in the nineteenth century: the worst was in 1854, when “property valued at half-a-million pounds sterling” was destroyed in four hours and a thousand people were killed.

  Since the late nineteenth century onward, cyclones in the region seem to have “abated in number and intensity,” but that may well be changing now. In 2009 Mumbai did experience a cyclonic storm, but fortunately its maximum wind speeds were in the region of 50 mph (85 kmph), well below those of a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane intensity scale. But encounters with storms of greater intensity may be forthcoming: 2015 was the first year in which the Arabian Sea is known to have generated more storms than the Bay of Bengal. This trend could tip the odds toward the recurrence of storms like those of centuries past.

  Indeed, even as Adam and I were exchanging messages, Cyclone Chapala, a powerful storm, was forming in the Arabian Sea. Moving westward, it would hit the coast of Yemen on November 3, becoming the first Category 1 cyclone in recorded history to do so: in just two days, it would deluge the coast with more rain than it would normally get in several years. And then—as if to confirm the projections—even as Chapala was still battering Yemen, another cyclone, Megh, formed in the Arabian Sea and began to move along a similar track. A few days later another cyclone began to take shape in the Bay of Bengal, so that the Indian subcontinent was flanked by cyclones on both sides, a very rare event.

  Suddenly the waters around India were churning with improbable events.

  11.

  What might happen if a Category 4 or 5 storm, with 150 mph or higher wind speeds, were to run directly into Mumbai? Mumbai’s previous encounters with powerful cyclones occurred at a time when the city had considerably less than a million inhabitants; today it is the second-largest municipality in the world with a population of over 20 million. With the growth of the city, its built environment has also changed so that weather that is by no means exceptional often has severe effects: monsoon downpours, for instance, often lead to flooding nowadays. With an exceptional event the results can be catastrophic.

  One such occurred on July 26, 2005, when a downpour without precedent in Mumbai’s recorded history descended on the city: the northern suburbs received 94.4 cm of rain in fourteen hours, one of the highest rainfall totals ever recorded anywhere in a single day. On that day, with catastrophic suddenness, the people of the city were confronted with the costs of three centuries of interference with the ecology of an estuarine location.

  The remaking of the landscape has so profoundly changed the area’s topography that its natural drainage channels are now little more than filth-clogged ditches. The old waterways have been so extensively filled in, diverted, and built over that their carrying capacity has been severely diminished; and the water bodies, swamplands, and mangroves that might have served as natural sinks have also been encroached upon to a point where they have lost much of their absorptive ability.

  A downpour as extreme as that of July 26 would pose a challenge even to a very effective drainage system: Mumbai’s choked creeks and rivers were wholly inadequate to the onslaught. They quickly overflowed causing floods in which water was mixed with huge quantities of sewerage as well as dangerous industrial effluents. Roads and rail tracks disappeared under waist-high and even chest-high floodwaters; in the northern part of the city, where the rainfall was largely concentrated, entire neighborhoods were inundated: 2.5 million people “were under water for hours together.”

  On weekdays Mumbai’s suburban railway network transports close to 6.6 million passengers; buses carry more than 1.5 million. The deluge came down on a Tuesday, beginning at around 2 p.m. Local train services were soon disrupted, and by 4:30 p.m. none were moving; several arterial roads and intersections were cut off by floodwaters at about the same time. The situation worsened as more and more vehicles poured on to the roads; in many parts of the city traffic came to a complete standstill. Altogether two hundred kilometers of road were submerged; some motorists drowned in their cars because short-circuited electrical systems would not allow them to open doors and windows. Thousands of scooters, motorcycles, cars, and buses were abandoned on the water-logged roads.

  At around 5 p.m. cellular networks failed; most landlines stopped working too. Soon much of the city’s power supply was also cut off (although not before several people had been electrocuted): parts of the city would remain without power for several days. Two million people, including many schoolchildren, were stranded, with no means of reaching home; a hundred and fifty thousand commuters were jammed into the city’s two major railway stations. Those without money were unable to withdraw cash because ATM services had been knocked out as well.

  Road, rail, and air services would remain cut off for two days. Over five hundred people died: many were washed away in the floods; some were killed in a landslide. Two thousand residential buildings were partially or completely destroyed; more than ninety thousand shops, schools, health care centers, and other buildings suffered damage.

  While Mumbai’s poor, especially the inhabitants of some of its informal settlements, were among the worst affected, the rich and famous were not spared either. The most powerful politician in the city had to be rescued from his home in a fishing boat; many Bollywood stars and industrialists were stranded or trapped by floodwaters.

  Through all of this the people of Mumbai showed great generosity and resilience, sharing food and water and opening up their homes to strangers. Yet, as one observer notes, on July 26, 2005, it became “clear to many million people in Mumbai that life may never be quite the same again. An exceptional rainstorm finally put to rest the long prevailing myth of Mumbai
’s indestructible resilience to all kinds of shocks, including that of the partition.”

  In the aftermath of the deluge, many recommendations were made by civic bodies, NGOs, and even the courts. But ten years later, when another downpour occurred on June 10, 2015, it turned out that few of the recommended measures had been implemented: even though the volume of rainfall was only a third of that of the deluge of 2005, many parts of the city were again swamped by floodwaters.

  What does Mumbai’s experience of the downpour of 2005 tell us about what might, or might not, happen if a major storm happens to hit the city? The events will, of course, unfold very differently: to start with, a cyclone will arrive not with a few hours’ notice, as was the case with the deluges, but after a warning period of several days. Storms are now so closely tracked, from the time they form onward, that there is usually an interval of a few days when emergency measures can be put in place.

  Of these emergency measures, probably the most effective is evacuation. In historically cyclone-prone areas, like eastern India and Bangladesh, systems have been set up to move millions of people away from the coast when a major storm approaches; these measures have dramatically reduced casualties in recent years. But the uptick in cyclonic activity in the Arabian Sea is so recent that there has yet been no need for large-scale evacuations on the subcontinent’s west coast. Whether such evacuations could be organized is an open question. Mumbai has been lucky not to have been hit by a major storm in more than a century; perhaps for that reason the possibility appears not to have been taken adequately into account in planning for disasters. Moreover, here, “as in most megacities, disaster management is focused on post-disaster response.”

  In Mumbai disaster planning seems to have been guided largely by concerns about events that occur with little or no warning, like earthquakes and deluges: evacuations usually follow rather than precede disasters of this kind. With a cyclone, given a lead-up period of several days, it would not be logistically impossible to evacuate large parts of the city before the storm’s arrival: its rail and port facilities would certainly be able to move millions of people to safe locations on the mainland. But in order to succeed, such an evacuation would require years of planning and preparation; people in at-risk areas would also need to be educated about the dangers to which they might be exposed. And that exactly is the rub—for in Mumbai, as in Miami and many other coastal cities, these are often the very areas in which expensive new construction projects are located. Property values would almost certainly decline if residents were to be warned of possible risks—which is why builders and developers are sure to resist efforts to disseminate disaster-related information. One consequence of the last two decades of globalization is that real estate interests have acquired enormous power, not just in Mumbai but around the world; very few civic bodies, especially in the developing world, can hope to prevail against construction lobbies, even where it concerns public safety. The reality is that “growth” in many coastal cities around the world now depends on ensuring that a blind eye is turned toward risk.

  Even with extensive planning and preparation the evacuation of a vast city is a formidable task, and not only for logistical reasons. The experience of New Orleans, in the days before Hurricane Katrina, or of New York before Sandy, or the city of Tacloban before Haiyan, tells us that despite the most dire warnings large numbers of people will stay behind; even mandatory evacuation orders will be disregarded by many. In the case of a megacity like Mumbai this means that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, will find themselves in harm’s way when a cyclone makes landfall. Many will no doubt assume that having dealt with the floods of the recent past they will also be able to ride out a storm.

  But the impact of a Category 4 or 5 cyclone will be very different from anything that Mumbai has experienced in living memory. During the deluges of 2005 and 2015 rain fell heavily on some parts of the city and lightly on others: the northern suburbs bore the brunt of the rainfall in both cases. The effects of the flooding were also most powerfully felt in low-lying areas and by the residents of ground-level houses and apartments; people living at higher elevations, and on the upper stories of tall buildings, were not as badly affected.

  But the winds of a cyclone will spare neither low nor high; if anything, the blast will be felt most keenly by those at higher elevations. Many of Mumbai’s tall buildings have large glass windows; few, if any, are reinforced. In a cyclone these exposed expanses of glass will have to withstand, not just hurricane-strength winds, but also flying debris. Many of the dwellings in Mumbai’s informal settlements have roofs made of metal sheets and corrugated iron; cyclone-force winds will turn these, and the thousands of billboards that encrust the city, into deadly projectiles, hurling them with great force at the glass-wrapped towers that soar above the city.

  Nor will a cyclone overlook those parts of the city that were spared the worst of the floods; to the contrary they will probably be hit first and hardest. The cyclones that have struck the west coast of India in the past have all traveled upward on a northeasterly tack, from the southern quadrant of the Arabian Sea. A cyclone moving in this direction would run straight into south Mumbai, where many essential civic and national institutions are located.

  The southernmost tip of Mumbai consists of a tongue of low-lying land, much of it reclaimed; several important military and naval installations are located there, as is one of the country’s most important scientific bodies—the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. A storm surge of two or three meters would put much of this area under water; single-story buildings may be submerged almost to the roof. And an even higher surge is possible.

  Not far from here lie the areas in which the city’s most famous landmarks and institutions are located: most notably, the iconic Marine Drive, with its sea-facing hotels, famous for their sunset views, and its necklace-like row of art deco buildings. All of this sits on reclaimed land; at high tide waves often pour over the seawall. A storm surge would be barely impeded as it swept over and advanced eastward.

  A distance of about four kilometers separates south Mumbai’s two sea-facing shorelines. Situated on the east side are the city’s port facilities, the legendary Taj Mahal Hotel, and the plaza of the Gateway of India, which is already increasingly prone to flooding. Beyond lies a much-used fishing port: any vessels that had not been moved to safe locations would be seized by the storm surge and swept toward the Gateway of India and the Taj Hotel.

  At this point waves would be pouring into South Mumbai from both its sea-facing shorelines; it is not inconceivable that the two fronts of the storm surge would meet and merge. In that case the hills and promontories of south Mumbai would once again become islands, rising out of a wildly agitated expanse of water. Also visible above the waves would be the upper stories of many of the city’s most important institutions: the Town Hall, the state legislature, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Railway Terminus, the towering headquarters of the Reserve Bank of India, and the skyscraper that houses India’s largest and most important stock exchange.

  Much of south Mumbai is low lying; even after the passing of the cyclone many neighborhoods would probably be waterlogged for several days; this will be true of other parts of the city as well. If the roads and rail lines are cut for any length of time, food and water shortages may develop, possibly leading to civil unrest. In Mumbai waterlogging often leads to the spread of illness and disease: the city’s health infrastructure was intended to cater to a population of about half its present size; its municipal hospitals have only forty thousand beds. Since many hospitals will have been evacuated before the storm, it may be difficult for the sick and injured to get medical attention. If Mumbai’s stock exchange and Reserve Bank are rendered inoperative, then India’s financial and commercial systems may be paralyzed.

  But there is another possibility, yet more frightening. Of the world’s megacities, Mumbai is one of the few that has a nuclear facility within its urban limits: the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Tr
ombay. To the north, at Tarapur, ninety-four kilometers from the city’s periphery, lies another nuclear facility. Both these plants sit right upon the shoreline, as do many other nuclear installations around the world: these locations were chosen in order to give them easy access to water.

  With climate change many nuclear plants around the world are now threatened by rising seas. An article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists notes: “During massive storms . . . there is a greatly increased chance of the loss of power at a nuclear power plant, which significantly contributes to safety risks.” Essential cooling systems could fail; safety systems could be damaged; contaminants could seep into the plant and radioactive water could leak out, as happened at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

  What threats might a major storm pose for nuclear plants like those in Mumbai’s vicinity? I addressed this question to a nuclear safety expert, M. V. Ramana, of the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. His answer was as follows: “My biggest concerns have to do with the tanks in which liquid radioactive waste is stored. These tanks contain, in high concentrations, radioactive fission products and produce a lot of heat due to radioactive decay; explosive chemicals can also be produced in these tanks, in particular hydrogen gas. Typically waste storage facilities include several safety systems to prevent explosions. During major storms, however, some or all of these systems could be simultaneously disabled: cascading failures could make it difficult for workers to carry out any repairs—this is assuming that there will be any workers available and capable of undertaking repairs during a major storm. An explosion at such a tank, depending on the energy of the explosion and the exact weather conditions, could lead to the dispersal of radioactivity over hundreds of square kilometers; this in turn could require mass evacuations or the long-term cessation of agriculture in regions of high contamination.”