KUAKATA, Bangladesh — At least 16 people died after
Cyclone Sitrang
slammed into Bangladesh, forcing the evacuation of about a million people from
their homes, officials said Tuesday.
اضافة اعلان
Cyclones — the equivalent of hurricanes in the
Atlantic or typhoons in the Pacific — are a regular menace but scientists say
climate change is likely making them more intense and frequent.
Sitrang made landfall in southern
Bangladesh late
Monday but authorities managed to get about a million people to safety before
the monster weather system hit.
Around 10 million people were without power in
districts along the coast on Tuesday, while schools were shut across much of
the country’s south.
Government official Jebun Nahar said 16 people died,
mostly after they were hit by falling trees, with two killed when their boat
sank in squally weather in the Jamuna River in the north.
“We still have not got all the reports of damages,”
she told AFP.
Eight people are missing from a dredging boat that
sank during the storm late Monday night in the
Bay of Bengal, near the country’s
largest industrial park at Mirsarai, regional fire department chief Abdullah
Pasha said.
“Strong wind flipped the dredger and it sank
instantly in the Bay of Bengal,” he told AFP, adding that divers were searching
for survivors.
People evacuated from low-lying regions such as
remote islands and river banks were moved to thousands of multistory cyclone
shelters, Disaster Management Ministry secretary Kamrul Ahsan told AFP.
“They spent the night in cyclone shelters. And this
morning many are heading back to their homes,” he said.
Ahsan said nearly 10,000 homes were either
“destroyed or damaged” in the storm and around 1,000 shrimp farms had been
washed away in floods.
In some cases police had to cajole villagers who
were reluctant to abandon their homes, officials said.
Trees were uprooted as far away as the capital
Dhaka, hundreds of kilometres from the storm’s center.
Heavy rains lashed much of the country, flooding
cities such as Dhaka, Khulna and Barisal — which took on 324mm of rainfall on
Monday.
About 33,000 Rohingya refugees from
Myanmar,
controversially relocated from the mainland to a storm-prone island in the Bay
of Bengal, were ordered to stay indoors but there were no reports of casualties
or damage, officials said.
Panic and snakes
The cyclone uprooted trees
and brought widespread panic to the southern island of Maheshkhali after power
and telecoms were cut.
“Such was the power of the wind we could not sleep
in the night because of the fear that our homes will be destroyed. Snakes
entered many homes. Water also inundated many homes,” said Tahmidul Islam, 25,
a resident of Maheshkhali.
In the worst-affected Barisal region, teeming rains
and heavy winds wreaked havoc on vegetable farms, district administrator Aminul
Ahsan told AFP.
In the neighboring Indian state of West Bengal,
thousands of people were evacuated Monday to more than 100 relief centers,
officials said, but there were no reports of damage and people were returning
home on Tuesday.
Last year, more than a million people were evacuated
along India’s east coast before Cyclone Yaas battered the area with winds
gusting up to 155km/h — equivalent to a Category 2 hurricane.
Cyclone Amphan, the second “super cyclone” recorded
over the Bay of Bengal, killed more than 100 people in Bangladesh and India and
affected millions when it hit in 2020.
In recent years, better forecasting and more
effective evacuation planning have dramatically reduced the death toll from
such storms. The worst recorded, in 1970, killed hundreds of thousands of
people.
Read more Region and World
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
