Hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh are being evacuated to coastal areas as a powerful cyclone approaches which is expected to cause a three-meter storm when it makes landfall early Tuesday (October 25th), authorities said.
Cyclone Sitrang is expected to hit the southern coastal town of Khepupara on Tuesday morning, according to the weather bureau. Authorities say a three-meter-high storm surge could occur and flood a large area of low-lying land along the coast of Bangladesh, where millions of people live.
Outside the levee system
“Evacuation operations have already begun“, told AFP the government secretary in charge of disaster management, Kamrul Hasan. Up to 400,000 people from vulnerable villages and coastal areas will be evacuated to shelters, government administrators in the coastal districts of Patuakhali, Bhola, Barguna and Jhalakathi said. “The evacuation began this morningadded the Minister, adding that more than 7,000 shelters were ready to accommodate the population of the coast.
At least 250,000 people have already been evacuated from coastal districts to shelters on Monday afternoon, two regional administrators told AFP. Tens of thousands of volunteers have been mobilized to help with evacuations, a Red Crescent spokesman said. “We have already evacuated the most vulnerable peopleAminul Ahsan, regional administrator of Barisal, told AFP.
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“We have a plan to evacuate some 250,000 peopleby Monday evening, Kamal Hossain, the district administrator of Patuakhali, told AFP. In Barguna, authorities plan to relocate 70,000 people who live outside the dike system, district chief Habibur Rahman told AFP.
Further east, on the island of Bhashan Char in the Bay of Bengal, which is home to some 33,000 Rohingya refugees and whose recent relocation remains controversial, the authorities have recommended that residents not go out. “The Bhashan Char shelters are protected by a dyke more than five meters high. But we still asked people to stay at home“, told AFP a security official from the island.
Responsible global warming
Bangladeshi authorities have also shipped dry foods to coastal districts and reinforced hospital teams in rural areas of the region. The Red Crescent Society has also mobilized tens of thousands of volunteers to alert the population by loudspeaker and help evacuate them to shelters, Shahinur Rahman, a spokesman for the society, told AFP. Bangladesh, a country of around 170 million people, is ranked among the countries most affected by extreme weather events since the turn of the century, according to the UN.
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Global warming is likely to make cyclones more intense and frequent in South Asian countries bordering the Bay of Bengal, scientists say, but evacuation procedures have also improved greatly thanks to forecasts. more precise. In 2020, Cyclone Amphan, the secondsuper cyclone» never recorded in the Bay of Bengal, caused more than 100 deaths in Bangladesh and India and several million victims.