Hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh are being evacuated to coastal areas as a powerful cyclone approaches that is expected to cause a three-meter storm when it lands early Tuesday, authorities said.
Cyclone Sitrang is expected to hit the southern coastal town of Khepupara on Tuesday morning, according to the meteorological office.
Authorities say a three-meter-high storm surge could occur and flood a large area of lowland along the coast of Bangladesh, where millions of people live.
“Evacuation operations have already begun,” government secretary for disaster management Kamrul Hasan told AFP.
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.
“We have a plan to evacuate approximately 250,000 people” by Monday evening, Kamal Hossain, the Patuakhali district administrator, told AFP.
In Barguna, authorities plan to relocate 70,000 people living outside the dam 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, authorities have advised residents not to go out.
“The Bhashan Char shelters are protected by a dam over five meters high. But we still asked people to stay home, ”a security official told the island’s AFP.
Bangladeshi authorities have also shipped dry food to coastal districts and strengthened hospital teams in rural areas of the region.
The Red Crescent Society has also mobilized tens of thousands of volunteers to alert the population with a loudspeaker and help them evacuate shelters, Shahinur Rahman, a spokesperson for the company, 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 United Nations.
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 significantly thanks to more accurate forecasts.
In 2020, Cyclone Amphan, the second “super cyclone” ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal, claimed more than 100 deaths in Bangladesh and India and several million lives.
