2.6m people flee in face of major storm
APOWERFUL cyclone has slammed ashore along the coastline of India and Bangladesh, where more than 2.6 million people have fled to shelters in a frantic evacuation made all the more challenging by coronavirus.
Cyclone Amphan, the equivalent of a Category 3 hurricane, was packing winds of up to 105mph and maximum gusts of 118mph.
Authorities warned it could cause extensive damage to flimsy houses and a storm surge may push seawater 15 miles inland, flooding cities including Kolkata.
The densely populated regions are home to some of the most vulnerable communities in South Asia – poor fishing communities in the Sunderbans and more than a million Rohingya refugees living in the crowded camps in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
The cyclone began to make landfall between Digha in West Bengal, and Hatiya Islands in Bangladesh. The eye of the storm is likely to pass through the Sunderbans, one of the largest mangrove forests in the world, according to India’s meteorological department.
The forests could act as a vital line of defence by dissipating some of the energy from the waves that would otherwise crash into the coastline, said KJ Ramesh, the department’s former chief.
Bangladesh is attempting to evacuate 2.2 million people. India’s West Bengal state moved nearly 300,000 and Odisha state another 148,486 people, officials said.
In Cox’s Bazar, where the first 10 coronavirus cases were confirmed last week, authorities and UN workers prepared 50 shelters and assigned 256 volunteer units.
Areas at risk of landslides were stabilised with bamboo and concrete walls. But the combination of the virus and cyclone could lead to a “new humanitarian crisis”, said Manuel Pereira, deputy chief of mission for the International Organisation for Migration in Bangladesh.
“We know that if people are forced to seek communal shelter, they’ll be unable to maintain physical distancing and run the risk of contracting or transmitting the virus,” said Mr Pereira.
Masks and hand sanitisers were hastily added to emergency items in the shelters.
Sobrato Das, a fisherman in Mousuni Island in India, close to the Sunderbans, described the shelters as crowded and said “very few people are wearing masks”.