The storm should touch the country Tuesday morning.
Le Monde with AFP
Hundreds of thousands of people are being evacuated to Bangladesh as a powerful cyclone approaches, which is expected to reach the coasts of the country early Tuesday, October 25. The Cyclone Sitrang should touch the coastal city of Khepupara in the south of the country.
According to the authorities, a three-meter-high storm wave could occur and flood a large area of bass land along the coasts of Bangladesh, where millions of people live.
Up to 400,000 people from vulnerable villages and coastal areas will be evacuated to shelters, have explained government administrators from coastal districts of Patuakhali, Bhola, Barguna and Jhalakathi. “We have a plan to evacuate some 250,000 people” by Monday evening, told the France-Presse (AFP) agency Kamal Hossain, the administrator of the Patuakhali district.
In Barguna, the authorities plan to move 70,000 people who live outside the dike system, AFP Habibur Rahman, district chief, told AFP. Further east, on the island of Bhashan Char, in the Gulf of Bengal, which houses some 33,000 Rohingyas refugees and whose recent relocation remains controversial, the authorities recommended residents not to go out. “The shelters of Bhashan Char are protected by a dike more than five meters high. But we still asked people to stay at home,” an island security official told AFP.
A country accustomed to extreme weather phenomena
The Bangladaise authorities have also shipped dry food in coastal districts and strengthened the teams from hospitals in rural areas in the region. The Crescent-Rouge company has also mobilized tens of thousands of volunteers to alert the population by loudspeaker and help its evacuation towards shelters, a spokesperson for the company.
Bangladesh, a country of around 170 million inhabitants, has been classified among the countries most affected by extreme weather phenomena since the beginning of the century, according to the United Nations (UN). According to scientists, it is likely that global warming makes cyclones more intense and more frequent in the countries of South Asia, bordered by the Gulf of Bengal, but the evacuation procedures have also greatly improved thanks to more precise forecasts.
In 2020, Cyclone Amphan, the second “Super Cyclone” never recorded in the Gulf of Bengal, had left more than 100 dead in Bangladesh and India and several million victims.