Cyclone hits India, Bangladesh
NEW DELHI — A powerful cyclone plowed inland Wednesday along the coastline of India and Bangladesh, where more than 2.6 million people fled to shelters in a frantic evacuation made all the more challenging by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cyclone Amphan, the equivalent of a Category 3 hurricane, was packing winds of up to 105 mph and maximum gusts of 118 mph. Although the cyclone was expected to weaken as it moved toward Bangladesh, authorities warned that it could cause extensive damage to flimsy houses and that a storm surge could push seawater 15 miles inland, flooding cities including Kolkata (formerly Calcutta).
The cyclone washed away bridges connecting Indian islands to the mainland and left many areas without electricity or phone service, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee told reporters Wednesday evening. She said that, while a clearer picture of the devastation would emerge by Thursday, there had been at least seven deaths.
“We are facing three crises: the coronavirus, the thousands of migrants who are returning home and now the cyclone,” said Banerjee, who is an opposition leader and one of the fiercest critics of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The southern districts of the state were worst affected, officials said, and the crisis was far from over, with strong winds likely to continue until early Thursday. Heavy rainfall was forecast for many parts of the state in the coming week.
As the cyclone hit the coast, coconut trees swayed wildly, electrical poles lay scattered on the roads of Kolkata, rain pounded fishing villages and rivers surged. Thousands of homes were damaged and river embankments were washed away.
“The next 24 hours are very crucial. This is a long haul,” said M. Mohapatra, India’s chief meteorologist.
The cross-border region is home to 58 million people who are among the most vulnerable in South Asia. They include poor fishing communities in the Sundarbans delta region and more than 1 million Rohingya refugees living in crowded camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.
A woman crushed by a tree and a 13-year-old girl killed near Kolkata were among the first deaths reported in India before phone connectivity snapped. In southern Bangladesh, a volunteer on a cyclone preparedness team drowned when a boat capsized in a canal.
“This is quite a double whammy,” said T. Sundararaman, a health systems consultant in Pondicherry in southeastern India. “This pandemic is a new spin on it.”
He said the cyclone could have devastating consequences for India’s fight against the pandemic, possibly causing it to spread to more remote communities.
“Our responses will be crippled. Our supply lines will be threatened. How will we move in relief supplies overland if all of it is in lockdown?” he said.
The cyclone made landfall between Digha, a seaside resort in West Bengal, and Hatiya Island in Bangladesh. The eye of the storm was likely to pass through the Sundarbans, one of the largest mangrove forests in the world, India’s meteorological department said.
The forests could act as a vital line of defense by dissipating some of the energy from the waves that would otherwise crash into the coastline, said K.J. Ramesh, the department’s former chief.
People living in isolated mangrove forest communities were vulnerable. Tuhin Ghosh, director of the School of Oceanographic Studies at Jadavpur University, said that their houses could be inundated and that mud homes had already washed away.
Bangladesh has evacuated about 2.4 million people to safety. India’s West Bengal state moved nearly 300,000 and Odisha state 148,486, officials said.
In refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, where the first 10 coronavirus cases were confirmed last week, authorities and United Nations workers prepared 50 shelters and assigned 256 volunteer units.
Areas at risk of landslides were stabilized 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 Organization 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,” Pereira said.
Masks and hand sanitizer were hastily added to the emergency items stocked in storm shelters. But the COVID-19 pandemic has made it harder to save lives.
Sobrato Das, a fisherman on Mousuni, an Indian island close to the Sundarbans, described the shelters as crowded and said “very few people are wearing masks.”
He said children were crying and women desperately tried to cover their faces with their saris while trying to maintain some distance from one another.
Some shelters in West Bengal were used for quarantining COVID-19 patients and migrant workers traveling after India’s lockdown was eased, officials said. Some schools are now being used to shelter people, news reports said.
The West Bengal government has also asked that special trains for migrant workers be suspended, said Banerjee, the state’s chief minister.
After reaching land, the cyclone is expected to move away swiftly and weaken by Thursday.