Sadananda Maity of Howrah’s Sankrail came with this family to Digha on Wednesday morning as he wanted to experience the thrill of high sea waves triggered by Cyclone Dana.

But Maity had to give up his plan as he was sent back by the vigilant district administration on Thursday morning to avert any potential harm to tourists ahead of the cyclone expected to make its landfall in Odisha’s Dhamri, some 197km from Digha, in the small hours of Friday.

Government officials asked nearly 10,000 tourists from the coastal conglomerate of Bengal tourism — Digha, Shankarpur, Tajpur and Mandarmani — to leave.

“I came to Digha with my family for the first time and I had a booking for three days but had to leave immediately because the administration would not allow tourists here because of the cyclone. We are frustrated but there is nothing we can do,” Maity said before leaving Digha on Thursday morning.

“It was really difficult for us to prevent the people from venturing into the sea. Thousands of people rushed to the beach for joyrides on the rising waves. We had to do our patrolling with a siren-van and threaten to arrest people if they went to the sea,” Ratan Das, a civil defence worker and an expert at saving people from drowning, said.

On Thursday, Digha police detained 10 individuals for several hours and released them only when they agreed to leave their hotel and go home.

On Tuesday, district magistrate of East Midnapore Purnendu Majhi, who is also the chief executive officer of Digha-Sankarpur Development Authority, issued a directive to hoteliers and lodge-owners that tourists must vacate hotels by Wednesday afternoon.

“There are some 2,000 hotels in Digha, Mandarmoni, Tajpur, and Sankarpur that accommodate around 50,000 people. While many tourists left on their own, some 10,000 tourists were reluctant. There is always a possibility of harm because of the cyclone and so we persuaded them to vacate by Thursday afternoon,” East Midnapore SP Soumyadeep Bhattacharya said.

The police sealed all entry and exit points to the Digha beach and cordoned off the 3km beach with bamboo barricades and ropes so that no one could venture out into the rough sea during the potential landfall.

The administration also cancelled all Digha-bound trains.

“Many people had made advance bookings but we cancelled them all. Tourists who had come have left or are departing. We will all ensure that Digha becomes tourist-free by tonight (Thursday night),” the secretary of the hotel owners’ association, Bipradas Chakraborty, said.