A super cyclone was bearing down rapidly on Bangladesh’s south-west coastline on Thursday, ripping off tin roofs from houses and uprooting trees, as hundreds of thousands were evacuated to safer ground.
London-based Tropical Storm Risk said Cyclone Sidr was a category-four storm, packing winds of 250km/h, and was heading due north on a course that would take it over the heavily populated southern coast and then towards the capital, Dhaka.
”From my window, I can see tins ripped off the roofs and tree branches flying under the sky covered with thick clouds,” said Moulvi Feroze Ahmed, a local government official on St Martin’s island in the Bay of Bengal near the storm. ”It looks like the sea is coming to grab us.”
Cyclones can cause immense devastation in disaster-prone Bangladesh, a low-lying country of more than 140-million people, particularly from storm surges that can rise as high as 5m as severe cyclones make landfall, weather experts say.
The storm started blowing fiercely at 5pm local time at Dublarchar and nearby fishing islands and at the Hiron Point near the Sundarbans at 7pm, local officials said. The mangrove forests in the Sundarbans are home to the endangered Bengal tigers and the park is a World Heritage Site.
Both areas have been hit by winds of up to 160km/h, and weather officials told a reporter in nearby Mongla that these speeds could rise above 180km/h in an hour or so.
”Given the current speed, the core of the storm may pass through the Sundarban-Barisal coast into the mainland in about two or three hours, and then lose its strength,” said one meteorology official at 2.30pm GMT.
So far, no loss of life or major property damage has been reported, officials said.
Power and telephone links have been largely cut, but some mobile networks were working sporadically, the reporter said.
Navy officials said many of Dublarchar’s nearly 15 000 fishermen were believed to have taken shelter in the Sundarban mangroves, with their boats.
Rivers flowing into the Bay of Bengal along parts of the southern coast have all swollen and are still rising, Water Department officials said. Some areas have been inundated by a storm surge of up to 2,3m, and many thatched homes have been swept away, disaster-management officials said.
The Bangladesh Meteorology Department said the core of the storm was about 150km from the Mongla coast and was expected to make landfall around midnight on Thursday (6pm GMT).
Hundreds of thousands evacuated
Officials at Cox’s Bazar, a popular tourist destination, said they had evacuated nearly 200 000 people to about 600 government and private shelters and asked others to move on their own.
About 400 000 more had been evacuated from other coastal areas, disaster management officials said.
Storms batter the poor South Asian country every year. A severe cyclone killed more than half-a-million people in 1970, while one in 1991, which generated a 6m storm surge, killed 143 000 people.
Nearly 10-million Bangladeshis live along the southern coast, which usually takes the brunt of cyclones, but the area has shelters for only about half-a-million.
Chittagong and Mongla ports suspended operations on Wednesday and moved ships to safer areas, port officials said. Chittagong airport suspended flights and moved planes away, officials said.
All schools and colleges in Chittagong and other towns in the storm’s path have been shut down and fishing trawlers were asked to return to port immediately.
The Meteorology Department raised danger signal number 10, the highest, at Mongla, Bangladesh’s second main sea port, and number nine at Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar.
India issued a storm alert for coastal areas of Orissa and West Bengal on Thursday, Information and Broadcasting Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi told reporters after a Cabinet meeting.
Paramilitary forces were on standby to deploy to affected areas. — Reuters