At least nine people have been killed after a cyclone hit Bangladesh, forcing nearly a million people from their homes, officials said on Tuesday.
Hurricanes – the equivalent of hurricanes in the Atlantic or typhoons in the Pacific – are a regular threat, but climate change is likely to make them more intense and frequent, scientists say.
Cyclone Sethrang made landfall in southern Bangladesh late on Monday, but authorities managed to evacuate nearly a million people to safety before the monster weather system hit.
“Nine people have died, mostly from falling trees, including three members of the same family in (eastern district) Kamila,” a government official, Jibon Nahar, told JEE News.
Disaster Management Ministry Secretary Qamar Al Hasan told that evacuees from low-lying areas such as remote islands and riverbanks had been moved to thousands of multi-storey cyclone shelters.
“They spent the night in cyclone shelters,” he said.
In some cases, police had to harass villagers who were reluctant to leave their homes, officials said.
Torrential rains lashed much of the country, flooding cities such as Dhaka, Khulna and Barisal – which received 324 mm (13 inches) of rain on Monday.
About 33,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, who have been controversially relocated from the mainland to the storm-hit island in the Bay of Bengal, have been ordered to stay indoors and fear no loss of life or property, officials said. There is no notification.
Thousands of people were evacuated to more than 100 relief centers in the neighboring eastern Indian state of West Bengal on Monday, officials said, but there were no reports of casualties and people were returning home on Tuesday.
Cyclone Amphan, the second “super cyclone” ever recorded over the Bay of Bengal, hit in 2020, killing more than 100 people and affecting millions in Bangladesh and India.
In recent years, better forecasting and more effective evacuation planning have dramatically reduced the death toll from such storms. The worst on record, in 1970, killed hundreds of thousands.
