The Coringa Cyclones
In 1839, Coringa was a bustling port city on the Bay of Bengal in India’s east coast. Its population numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and its harbor hosted thousands of ships annually. Today, Coringa is a tiny village, with an equally tiny population. The drastic decline was caused by a pair of devastating cyclones, one in 1789, and an even more destructive one in 1839.
Coringa’s fortunes took a hit in 1789, when it was struck by a storm that came to be called The Great Coringa Cyclone. Witnesses described a succession of three giant waves, with the first storm tide driving ashore all the ships in anchorage, while the second and third waves, even bigger than the first, flowed inland to inundate the region’s fertile fields. Coringa was almost completely destroyed, and around 20,000 people were killed. However, those who named the 1789 storm the “Great Coringa Cyclone” did not suspect that an even more devastating cyclone would strike Coringa within a lifetime.
By 1839, Coringa had recovered and rebuilt, and was more prosperous, populous, and bustling than ever before. Then, on November 25, 1839, a monstrous cyclone struck, and brought with it a 40 foot storm surge. The destruction of the 1789 cyclone was dwarfed by that of 1839, which wholly destroyed Coringa. It wrecked all ships in the harbor, carried their wreckage miles inland, and killed over 300,000 people.
This time, the damage was so extensive that the few survivors made no effort to rebuild. Most scattered to pursue their lives elsewhere, putting distance between themselves and what seemed to be a cursed city. The few who remained, some of them old enough to have experienced both devastating cyclones, abandoned the coast altogether and rebuilt their community miles inland.
