Cyclone Phailin weakens after pounding India

India's strongest storm in 14 years left a trail of destruction along the country's east coast Sunday, but little loss of life was reported after close to a million people took refuge in shelters.

Cyclone Phailin was expected to dissipate within 36 hours, losing momentum as it headed inland after making landfall on Saturday from the Bay of Bengal, bringing winds of more than 125 mph to rip up homes and tear down trees.

At least 17 people were confirmed dead in the destruction, but that number is expected to rise. 

The cyclone was one of three major storms over Asia on Sunday. The smaller Typhoon Nari was approaching Vietnam and Typhoon Wipha loomed over the Pacific.

At least 800,000 people spent the night in shelters, some built after a storm killed 10,000 people in 1999. Others sought safety in schools or temples, in an exercise disaster management officials called one of India's largest evacuations.

"We saved lives by putting them in shelters in time," said J.K. Mohapatra, special relief commissioner in Odisha state.

There had been concern for 18 fishermen out at sea when the cyclone bore down, but police said on Sunday that all returned safe.

Further northeast, port officials said they feared a Panama-registered cargo ship, the MV Bingo, carrying 8,000 metric tons of iron ore with a crew of 17 Chinese and an Indonesian, had sunk on Saturday as the storm churned across the Bay of Bengal.

"The crew left the ship in a lifeboat around 4 p.m. on Saturday but have not been traced yet," I. Jeyakumar, deputy chairman of the Kolkata Port Trust, told Reuters.

But they were probably alive, he added, as radio contacts had been maintained until early on Sunday morning.

On land, truck driver Jayaram Yadav, transporting cars halfway across India, huddled in the cab of his 28-ton vehicle on Saturday night as the wind howled around him.

"I was just thinking: it's going to topple over - and then it did," said Yadav, who survived unscathed as his cargo of eight vehicles was scattered across a coastal highway.

Television broadcast images of cars flipped on their sides and streets strewn with debris in the silk-producing city of Brahmapur, one of the worst-hit areas.

Winds slowed to 56 mph early on Sunday and rain eased. But large swathes of Odisha, including its capital, Bhubaneswar, were without electricity for a second day after the storm tore down power cables.

Officials and aid workers said it was too early to assess damage accurately, but they were doing all they could.

"It's still raining it's very hard to get around. This is going to be a long-term response," Sonia Khush, director of emergency response for aid group Save the Children, told Al Jazeera.

"The first step is to clear the road to see what people's needs are."

Soldiers and rescue workers in helicopters, boats and trucks fanned out across the two states, but officials sounded confident that a major disaster had been avoided.

"All road communications will be opened by today evening. Most likely electricity will also be restored in the majority of districts," Mohapatra said.

"Now people are going back to their homes. Where their homes have been devastated, they will continue to stay in relief camps. We will provide them food."

Al Jazeera and Reuters