Bangladesh and India count the cost of 120kph gales from Cyclone Bulbul
Eight people were killed and dozens more were missing after Cyclone Bulbul smashed into the coasts of India and Bangladesh, bringing fierce gales and torrential rains.
More than two million people huddled in storm shelters as the cyclone struck coastlines in the Bay of Bengal late on Saturday with winds of up to 120 kilometres an hour, closing ports and airports.
Three people were killed in India’s West Bengal state: two when uprooted trees fell on their homes and another when struck by the falling branches of a tree in Kolkata. A fourth person died in a wall collapse in Odisha state.
In Bangladesh, four people were killed by falling trees and at least 20 were hurt. The cyclone also damaged about 4,000 mostly mud-and-tin houses, Bangladeshi minister Shah Kamal said.
Thirty-six fishermen were missing after two boats failed to return. Relatives were unable to contact the men on board, an official in Bangladesh’s Bhola district said.
No major damage was reported in camps in south-east Bangladesh where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees are living.
Bangladesh weather bureau officials said the cyclone turned into a deep depression as it moved inland, causing heavy rainfall. Wind speeds dropped to between 70 and 80kph.
In Khulna, the worst-hit district in Bangladesh, fallen trees blocked roads and some low-lying areas were flooded, disaster management minister Enamur Rahman said.
About 1,500 tourists were stranded on St Martin’s Island off south-east Bangladesh after boat services were cancelled.
“It may take a couple of days to get back to a normal situation,” Mr Rahman said.
Bulbul hit the coast at the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, which straddles Bangladesh and India and is home to endangered species including Bengal tigers and Irrawaddy dolphins.
As the storm approached, the Bangladeshi authorities suspended all activity at the country’s main seaports, including in Chittagong, which handles almost 80 per cent of the nation’s exports and imports. All vessels and fishing boats were told to stop operating.
Troops were sent to Bangladesh’s 13 coastal districts as more than two million people were moved to cyclone shelters. Tens of thousands of volunteers went door-to-door to urge people to leave their villages. Local authorities ordered school buildings and mosques to be used as refuges in addition to the dedicated cyclone shelters.
“We spent the night with another 400 people,” said Am
bia Begum, 30, who arrived at a shelter in the port town of Mongla late on Saturday along with her family.
“I am worried about my cattle and the straw roof of my house. I could not bring them here. Allah knows what is happening there,” the mother of three said.
In India, nearly 120,000 people who were moved to safety started to return home as the cyclone weakened, the authorities said.
“The storm has left a trail of destruction as it crossed the coastline of West Bengal,” the state urban development minister Firhad Hakim said. “Trees were uprooted; thatched and corrugated roofs of many houses were blown away.”
West Bengal and Odisha states received heavy rainfall since early Saturday.
Bangladesh’s low-lying coast, home to 30 million people, and India’s east are regularly battered by cyclones, with hundreds of thousands of people killed in recent decades.
Although the frequency and intensity of the storms have increased, partly due to climate change, death tolls have come down because of faster evacuations and the building of thousands of coastal shelters.
Cyclone Fani was the most powerful storm to hit the area in years when it struck in May, killing 12 people.
In 1999, a super-cyclone battered the coast of Odisha state for 30 hours, killing 10,000 people.