At least nine people have died after Cyclone Sitrang hit Bangladesh’s southern coast, cutting communications and electricity and destroying homes, officials said. “Nine people died, most from falling trees, including three from one family in (eastern district) Cumilla,” government official Jebun Nahar told.
The cyclone – the equivalent of hurricanes in the Atlantic or typhoons in the western Pacific – made landfall in southern Bangladesh late on Monday, but authorities managed to get about a million people to safety before the monster weather system hit. The cyclone swept in from the Bay of Bengal early Monday with wind gusts of up to 88 km/h (55 mph) and a storm surge of about three meters (10 feet) that inundated low-lying coastal areas.
Electricity and telephone connections were largely cut and coastal areas were plunged into darkness, officials said. “It was terrible, it looked like the sea had grabbed us,” Mizanur Rahman, a resident of Bhola district, told after communications were restored in his neighborhood. “We spent a sleepless night, all we could do was pray. People evacuated from low-lying areas such as remote islands and riverbanks have been moved to thousands of multi-storey cyclone shelters, disaster management ministry secretary Kamrul Ahsan told. “They spent the night in cyclone shelters,” he said.
Heavy rains lashed much of the country, flooding cities such as the capital Dhaka, Khulna and Barisal – where 324 millimeters of rain fell on Monday. People ride rickshaws and motorbikes on a flooded street amid continuous rain before Cyclone Sitrang made landfall in Dhaka, Bangladesh on October 24, 2022. Reporting from Barisal in southwestern Bangladesh, said a tidal wave from the cyclone inundated coastal areas, destroying farmland and fisheries. “The government managed to evacuate almost 700,000 people to cyclone shelters on Monday night,” he said from Barisal, about 30 km (18 miles) from the coast in the south.
“There is no electricity in the south-western belt, including Barisal town. This comes at a time when there is a power crisis in the region,” Chowdhury said. “Internet and communication links are down,” & correspondent said, adding that it would take some time to know the exact extent of the damage. No major damage was reported in refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh, where more than a million ethnic Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar live in overcrowded shelters.
Some 33,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar who were controversially relocated from the mainland to a storm-prone island in the Bay of Bengal have been ordered to stay indoors and no casualties or damage have been reported, officials said. In the neighboring eastern Indian state of West Bengal, thousands of people were evacuated to more than 100 relief centers on Monday, officials said, but no damage was reported and people were returning home on Tuesday.
People wade through a flooded street amid continuous rain before Cyclone Sitrang made landfall in Dhaka, Bangladesh on October 24, 2022 Cyclone Amphan, the second “super cyclone” ever recorded over the Bay of Bengal, which hit in 2020, killed more than 100 people in Bangladesh and India and affected millions. In recent years, better forecasts 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.
South Asia has experienced increasing extreme weather in recent years, causing widespread damage. According to ecologists, although cyclones are regular, they are becoming more intense and frequent as a result of climate change. ActionAid’s Bangladesh country director Farah Kabir said that in 2022, climate emergencies such as floods and droughts were “on a scale never seen before”. The climate crisis is growing and here in Bangladesh we are feeling its fury,” he said. “When extreme weather events like Cyclone Sitrang strike, communities are devastated. We urgently need access to funds that support communities living the reality of the climate crisis. A 2015 World Bank Institute study estimated that approximately 3.5 million people in Bangladesh are at risk of river flooding each year.
