Cyclone Dana is expected to hammer the low-lying regions of West Bengal and Odisha, home to around 150 million people, as a “severe cyclonic storm” late on Thursday or Friday morning, India’s weather bureau said. At least 1.1 million people on India’s eastern coast were fleeing to storm shelters inland, just hours before the storm’s arrival.

Authorities in India are evacuating nearly 1.5 million people from the path of an approaching cyclone in the eastern states of Odisha (formerly Orissa) and West Bengal. Thousands of relief workers have been deployed to minimise damage from Cyclone Dana, which is expected to make landfall in the next 24 hours.