Thousands evacuated as Cyclone Mocha makes landfall in Myanmar

Thousands of people have been evacuated to monasteries, pagodas and schools in Myanmar, seeking shelter from a powerful storm that tore the roofs off buildings and killed at least three people.

Cyclone Mocha made landfall near Sittwe township in Rakhine state on Sunday with wind speeds of up to 130 mph (209 km/h), the country’s meteorological department said.

Myanmar’s military information office said the storm had damaged homes, electricity infrastructure, mobile phone masts, boats and lampposts in Sittwe, Kyaukpyu, and Gwa townships. It said the storm also tore roofs off sports facilities on the Coco Islands, about 260 miles (418km) southwest of the country’s largest city, Yangon.

Rakhine-based media reported that streets and the basements of houses in Sittwe’s low-lying areas had been flooded. Much of the area is cut off from phone and internet services.

In videos collected by local media before communications were cut off, deep water races through streets while wind lashes trees and pulls boards off roofs. Rakhine-based media reported that streets were flooded, trapping people in low-lying areas in their homes as worried relatives outside the township appealed for rescue.

More than 4,000 of Sittwe’s 300,000 residents were evacuated to other cities, and more than 20,000 people were sheltering in monasteries, pagodas and schools on higher ground in the city, said Tin Nyein Oo, who is volunteering in Sittwe’s shelters.

Lin Lin, the head of a local charity, said earlier that there was not enough food in the shelters after more people than expected arrived.

Several deaths were reported as a result of the storm. A rescue team from eastern Shan state announced on its Facebook page that it had recovered the bodies of a couple buried when a landslide hit their house in Tachileik township. Local media reported that a man was crushed to death when a tree fell on him in Pyin Oo Lwin township in central Mandalay region.

Myanmar state television reported that the military government was preparing to send food, medicine and medical personnel to the storm-hit area. After battering Rakhine, the cyclone weakened and was forecast to hit the north-western state of Chin and the central regions on Monday.

Authorities in the Bangladeshi city of Cox’s Bazar, which lies in the storm’s predicted path, said they had evacuated about 1.27 million people. By early afternoon, however, it appeared the storm would mostly miss the country as it veered east, according to Azizur Rahman, the director of the country’s meteorological department.

“The level of risk has reduced to a great extent in Bangladesh,” he told reporters.

Strong winds with rains continued in Saint Martin’s Island in the Bay of Bengal, it was reported, with leading Bengali-language daily Prothom Alo saying about a dozen islanders were injured and around 300 homes destroyed or damaged. One woman was critically wounded, it said.

UN agencies and aid workers in Bangladesh had positioned tons of dry food and dozens of ambulances with mobile medical teams in refugee camps that house more than a million Rohingya people who fled persecution in

Myanmar.

In May 2008, Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar with a storm surge that devastated populated areas around the Irrawaddy River delta. At least 138,000 people died and tens of thousands of homes and other buildings were washed away.