Deadly Super Cyclone Leaves Trail of Destruction in Bangladesh, India
The most powerful cyclone to hit Bangladesh and eastern India in more than 20 years tore down homes, carried cars down flooded streets and claimed the lives of more than a dozen people.
Authorities began surveying the damage yesterday after millions spent a sleepless night which saw 165 kilometre (100 miles) an hour winds carrying away trees, electricity pylons, walls and roofs, and transformer stations exploding.
In Bangladesh officials said they were waiting for reports from the Sundarbans, a UNESCO world heritage site famed for its mangrove forest and population of endangered Bengal tigers, which bore the brunt of the storm.
Widespread relief that the evacuation of more than three million people from coastal villages had averted the horrific death tolls of past storms was tempered by fears of the coronavirus pandemic spreading in crowded shelters.
Authorities in both countries sent masks and sanitiser but social distancing was virtually impossible as families packed into reinforced schools, government buildings and community halls. Cyclones are an annual hazard along the Bay of Bengal coast. In 2007 Cyclone Sidr left more than 3,500 dead in Bangladesh.
Millions without power
Banerjee estimated there were 10 to 12 deaths in her state, though not all were immediately confirmed. Bangladesh officials said eight people had died,including a five-year-old boy and a 75-year-old man, both hit by falling trees, and a cyclone emergency volunteer who drowned.
Falling trees and chunks of concrete carried by the powerful winds were also blamed for the deaths in India.
West Bengal capital Kolkata awoke to flooded streets with some cars window-deep in water.
Much of the city of 15 million people was plunged into darkness as transformer stations exploded. Millions across India and Bangladesh were left without power, officials said.
The cyclone weakened as it moved along the Bangladesh coast but still unleashed heavy rains and fierce winds in Cox’s Bazar, the district which houses about one million Rohingya refugees from violence in Myanmar. Amphan was the first “super cyclone” to form over the Bay of Bengal since 1999, and packed winds gusting up to 185 kph at sea.
It brought a storm surge -- a wall of ocean water that is often one of the main killers in major weather systems -- that roared inland. In southwest Bangladesh, a 1.5 metre (five-feet) surge broke an embankment and swamped farmland, Police told AFP.
Bangladesh officials said the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans had borne the brunt.