Cyclone Sitrang slams into Bangladesh’s southern coast, snapping communications and energy hyperlinks, officers say.
At the least 9 folks have died after Cyclone Sitrang slammed into Bangladesh’s southern coast, snapping communications and energy hyperlinks and destroying homes, officers mentioned.
“9 folks have died, most by timber falling together with three from one household in (the japanese district of) Cumilla,” Jebun Nahar, a authorities official, informed AFP information company.
The cyclone – the equal of hurricanes within the Atlantic or typhoons within the west Pacific – made landfall in southern Bangladesh late on Monday however authorities managed to get about 1,000,000 folks to security earlier than the monster climate system hit.
The cyclone barrelled in from the Bay of Bengal early on Monday with winds gusting as much as 88km/h (55mph) and a storm surge of about three metres (10ft) that flooded low-lying coastal areas.
Energy and phone hyperlinks have been largely lower and coastal areas plunged into darkness, officers mentioned.
“It was horrible, it seemed like the ocean was coming to seize us,” Mizanur Rahman, a resident of Bhola district, informed Reuters after communications have been restored in his neighbourhood.
“We spent a sleepless night time, all we might do was pray.”
Individuals evacuated from low-lying areas similar to distant islands and riverbanks have been moved to hundreds of multi-storey cyclone shelters, Catastrophe Administration Ministry secretary Kamrul Ahsan informed AFP.
“They spent the night time in cyclone shelters,” he mentioned.
Heavy rains lashed a lot of the nation, flooding cities such because the capital, Dhaka, Khulna and Barisal – which witnessed 324 millimetres (13 inches) of rainfall on Monday.
Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Barisal in southwest Bangladesh, mentioned the tidal surge within the wake of the cyclone has inundated coastal areas and destroyed farmland and fisheries.
“The federal government was efficiently capable of evacuate almost 700,000 folks on Monday night to the cyclone shelters,” he mentioned from Barisal, about 30km (18 miles) from the shoreline within the south.
“There’s no electrical energy within the southwest belt, together with the Barisal metropolis. This comes at a time when there's a energy disaster within the area,” Chowdhury mentioned.
“The web and communication hyperlinks are disrupted,” the Al Jazeera correspondent mentioned, including that it'll take a while to know the precise extent of the injury.
No main injury was reported in refugee camps in southeast Bangladesh, the place greater than 1,000,000 ethnic Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Myanmar reside in crowded shelters.
About 33,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, controversially relocated from the mainland to a storm-prone island within the Bay of Bengal, have been ordered to remain indoors and there have been no experiences of any casualties or injury, officers mentioned.
Within the neighbouring japanese Indian state of West Bengal, hundreds of individuals have been evacuated on Monday to greater than 100 aid centres, officers mentioned, however there have been no experiences of harm and other people have been returning house on Tuesday.
Cyclone Amphan, the second “tremendous cyclone” ever recorded over the Bay of Bengal, which hit in 2020, killed greater than 100 folks in Bangladesh and India, and affected hundreds of thousands.
Lately, higher forecasting and more practical evacuation planning have dramatically decreased the demise toll from such storms. The worst recorded, in 1970, killed lots of of hundreds of individuals.
South Asia has skilled rising excessive climate in recent times inflicting large-scale injury. In keeping with environmentalists, cyclones, whereas common, are getting extra intense and frequent resulting from local weather change.
Bangladesh nation director of ActionAid group Farah Kabir mentioned 2022 had seen local weather emergencies similar to floods and droughts “on a scale that has by no means been witnessed earlier than”.
“The local weather disaster is rising, and right here in Bangladesh we really feel its ferocity,” he mentioned.
“When excessive climate occasions like Cyclone Sitrang strike, communities are left devastated. We urgently want entry to funds that help communities residing by the truth of the local weather disaster.”
A World Financial institution Institute examine in 2015 estimated that some 3.5 million folks in Bangladesh have been prone to river flooding yearly.
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