The Navy and Coastal Guard bases at Porbandar have been alerted to be ready for any eventuality.

The MET office and the state government had sounded on Tuesday night itself the highest local cautionary warning (LCS) No 10 for Saurashtra and Kutch region, warning all concerned that a cyclonic storm with a velocity of up to 120 kmph was likely to hit the Saurastra coast on Wednesday. For other coastal regions it varied from LCS No 9 to LCS No 1 at the southern most Umbagaon Port.

At the time of going to the press, the cyclone was centered over the Saurashtra region, as if the lull before the storm was likely to hit any of the coastaltowns on the Gulf of Kutch, between Nalia in the west and Kandla in the east, with a velocity of up to 200 to 240 kmph.

Minor damages of breach on the coastal embankment have been reported from the south Gujarat region apart from the grounding of a sailing vessel near Veraval port as waves of 3 to 4 metres height were observed at Porbandar, Okha and Mandvi ports at noon.

The Colaba observatory had noticed that the cyclone was moving in a jigsaw manner across the Arabian Sea with a velocity of 15 to 20 kmph till morning when it picked up intensity to move towards Veraval in the north-west direction.

Meanwhile, the Government's revenue department had, jointly with the Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB) and other authorities, shifted nearly 1 lakh people from the ports, salt pans and those engaged in shipbreaking at Alang and Sosiyo away from the sea shore. Fishermen were also asked not to venture out in the sea during the next 48 hours.

Ironically, a small-time soothsayer's prediction in a non-descriptperiodical two months ago that an impending deluge (not just a cyclone) is likely to hit specifically Alang on May 8 seems to be proving correct, just 12 days off the mark.

The prediction had resulted in a largescale exodus of people from Alang and other regions during the last one month as last year's devasting cyclone is still fresh in people's memory.

Thousands of people were killed and extensive damage was caused to port structures at Kandla, Porbandar, Navlakhi and Okha last year. The salt pan workers, caught unawares and swept away in the tidal waves two to three metres high, were the worst sufferers. The last body count by Government and other agencies was 1,280.