Precis (Summary) Writing – 18

Creative Writing – 67

Reduce the following paragraph to roughly one third its length without leaving out any important fact.

Passage

Odisha, a small state in the east coast of India, was battered by Cyclone Philine in the last weekend. The cyclone came from the Bay of Begal. It was the result of a low pressure area developing in the sea. From a location a few hundred kilometers off the coast, Cyclone Philine gradually moved towards the land. The wind speed was nearly 220 kilometers per hour. The violent wind hit villages near the coastline with deadly force. Mud houses were flattened, trees uprooted and power lines were reduced to tangled heaps of wire. Fortunately, weather radars tracked the Philine doggedly as a result of which people were evacuated from their houses that fell in the projected path of Cyclone Philine. Millions of people were quickly moved to temporary shelters with remarkable efficiency. This reduced the death toll to negligible numbers. It was a remarkable success of disaster management in India. In another operation, the Coast Guard spotted a cargo ship at night that had tilted dangerously in the waters a few kilometers off Bengal. Responding to its SOS call, the Coast Guard rushed to its rescue and lifted out the sailors who were floating on their life boat in the dark near their ship. [No of words 204]

Precis

Odisha suffers Nature’s Fury

Three days ago, Cyclone Philine coming from a low-pressure area in the Bay of Bengal tore through the coastal areas of the small eastern Indian state Odisha. With 220 kmph wind-speed, it flattened houses, and uprooted trees and power lines. Disaster management personnel evacuated millions to safety from the radar-predicted cyclone path. Also, the Coast Guard rescued some sailors from their life boat at night. Their ship had careened dizzily in the sea. [77 words]