The outer reaches of an expected severe cyclone buffeted Saint Martin’s island off Bangladesh’s coast on Thursday, as tens of thousands of mainlanders were evacuated to shelters and high land, officials said.
Strong winds with a speed of about 80km/h started slamming the island at about noon (6am GMT), said Moulvi Feroze Ahmed, a local government official.
”Some 6 000 residents and nearly 70 tourists have been evacuated to safety,” he said from the island, 35km from the mainland.
”The sea has started getting rough and the storm has already set off a three feet (one metre) high water surge.”
Earlier, officials said the storm, classified category four by the weather tracker Tropical Storm Risk, would likely make landfall in Bangladesh, any time from around 2pm (8am GMT) with winds of more than 210km/h.
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.
”The shifting process is continuing,” said Sajjadul Hasan, chief of the Cox’s Bazar district administration.
Nearly 43 000 volunteers drawn from civil and security agencies were deployed to help evacuate people and undertake rescue and relief operations after the storm hits, Mohammad Ayub Miah, the top bureaucrat in the Food and Disaster Ministry,
He said the country’s army-backed interim government had also sent extra food and medicine stocks to the coastal districts as part of a contingency plan.
Storms batter the poor South Asian country every year, killing hundreds of people. A severe storm killed more than half a million people in 1970, while a 1991 storm killed 143 000 people and destroyed thousands of properties.
Nearly 10-million Bangladeshis live on the coastlines that usually takes the brunt of the cyclones but the areas have shelters for around only half a million.
Volunteers of the Cyclone Preparedness Centre were moving through villages, using loudspeakers to alert people about the impending danger.
Chittagong and Mongla ports have suspended operations since Wednesday and moved ships to safer areas, port officials said. The Chittagong airport also suspended flights and moved planes to safer places, officials said.
All schools and colleges in Chittagong and other towns in the storm’s path have been shut down, they added.
Fishing trawlers have been asked to return to harbours immediately, fishing community leaders in Cox’s Bazar said.
The storm may also hit parts of eastern India and Burma, meteorological officials said.
Unusual calm
In Chittagong, officials said they were worried by the unusual calm before the storm.
”This suggests the core of the storm has been static, but may suddenly move with super speed before it finally slams the shores,” a meteorological official said.
The Bangladesh 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.
It may also trigger a tidal surge up to five metres in some areas, meteorological officials said.
Officials said the storm was also expected to hit Vishakapatnam on the eastern Indian coast as well as Sittewe in Burma.
In eastern India, the storm Sidr edged northward across the Bay of Bengal and was stationed 530km south of Kolkata, the region’s biggest city and capital of West Bengal state, on Thursday.
”The storm will hit the West Bengal coast around midnight with wind speed upto 200km per hour,” BP Yadav, a senior weather official said from New Delhi. ”We have suggested evacuation of people from the region,” he added. – Reuters