When it comes to tales of disaster, success stories are a rare genre. Even more so when the narrative hails from India, considered by the World Bank to be among the nations least prepared for disaster. So when a mammoth cyclone rips through a region inhabited by nearly 12 million people and kills less than 20, it’s a story that bears retelling.

That’s the plotline of Cyclone Phailin, which struck the Indian states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh with the strength of a Category 5 hurricane on Saturday, October 12. While the storm is considered the worst to beset the area in 15 years, lessons learned from previous cyclones made it among the best case scenarios.

“Credit is due to those who have been involved in efforts to reduce the scale of vulnerability to disasters across India,” Tom Mitchell, of the Overseas Development Institute, told Reuters. “The low loss of life, following the strongest storm ever measured in the Bay of Bengal, would almost certainly not have been possible without learning lessons from previous cyclones and tsunamis that have hit this coastline.”

Advances in Indian meteorology, a colossal evacuation effort, and improved communication and infrastructure are among the reasons Phailin failed to wreak the type of damage incurred by earlier cyclones in the region. By comparison, the most recent, the Paradip Super Cyclone of 1999, killed 10,000.

This time, however, meteorologists and emergency officials were prepared. Doppler radar systems, weather satellites, and other weather tracking improvements helped the India Meteorological Department issue warnings days in advance of the coming storm. And officials took heed. Relief supplies and personnel were moved into the area and emergency officials were able to evacuate more than 800,000 people, according to the New York Times.

“Because of the advanced warning, we were prepared for this situation,” Jibanananda Mohanty told the Times. “I haven’t heard of any loss of life in my neighborhood.”

Increased usage of cell phones and more television access also played a central role in effectively evacuating the area, the Times noted. Reuters pointed out that evacuation drills and an increase in concrete construction and cyclone shelters surely added to the region’s ability to weather the storm.

The disaster management successes during Cyclone Phailin aren’t the end of the story, of course. Not all regions are ready to respond as effectively as Odish and Andhra Pradesh and cautionary tales still abound. Flooding as Phailin moved inland, for example, stranded more than 250,000 people and left five dead. Earlier this year, flooding in Uttarakhand disrupted more than 2 million people and left 6,000 missing and presumed dead.

Still, with the outcome of the Cyclone Phailin so positive, it’s important to celebrate such efforts and what their successes might bode for the future.

“The superior preparedness and response this time for disaster is in sharp contrast to previous disastrous storms like the 1999 super cyclone,” wrote reporter Bharti Jain in The Times of India. “If there was a silver lining in the grim foreboding of a monster storm, it’s the realization that lives aren’t that cheap in India any longer.”