The Bay of Bengal’s fiercest storm this century – super cyclone Amphan – was bearing down on millions of people in eastern India and Bangladesh on Wednesday, with forecasts of a potentially devastating and deadly storm surge.
Authorities have scrambled to stage mass evacuations away from the path of Super Cyclone Amphan, which is only the second “super cyclone” to form in the north-eastern Indian Ocean since records began.
But their efforts have been hampered by the need to follow strict precautions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, with infection numbers still soaring in both countries.
Many thousands of migrant workers are on the roads trying to get home from big cities after a nationwide lockdown destroyed their livelihoods.
Out at sea the vast weather system visible from space has winds of up to 240 km/h (150mph), the equivalent of a category-four hurricane. It is expected to ease slightly before crossing the coasts of West Bengal and neighbouring Bangladesh but could still be strong enough to “cause large-scale and extensive damage”, said the head of India’s weather office Mrutyunjay Mohapatra.
The Indian weather department forecast a storm surge of 10ft to 16-foot (3-5m)waves – as high as a two-storey house – that could swamp mud dwellings along the coast, uproot communication towers and inundate roads and rail tracks.
Storm surges can force a wall of water to cascade several kilometres inland, and are often responsible for massive loss of life during the most severe cyclones.
Bangladesh’s low-lying coast, home to 30 million people, and India’s east are regularly battered by cyclones that have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in recent decades.
In 1999, the eastern state of Odisha was hit by a super cyclone that killed nearly 10,000 people. Eight years earlier, a typhoon, tornadoes and flooding killed 139,000 in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh authorities fear Amphan will be the most powerful storm since Cyclone Sidr devastated the country in 2007, killing about 3,500 people and causing billions of dollars in damage.
The country has been working to bring 2.2 million people to safety, while West Bengal was relocating 300,000 others.
The Catholic Relief Services (CRS) aid group said people faced “an impossible choice” of braving the cyclone by staying put, or risking coronavirus infection in a shelter.
Authorities in both countries said they were using extra shelter space to reduce crowding, while also making facemasks compulsory and providing extra soap and sanitiser.
“We are also keeping separate isolation rooms in the shelters for any infected patients,” Bangladesh’s junior disaster management minister Enamur Rahman told AFP.
Although outside the predicted direct path of the storm, there are fears for the safety of almost a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in south-eastern Bangladesh – most living in vast camps and housed in flimsy and makeshift shacks.
The first coronavirus cases were reported there last week, and by Tuesday there were six confirmed infections.
The UN said emergency items such as food, tarpaulins and water purification tablets had been stockpiled, while authorities said the refugees would be moved to sturdier buildings such as schools.
“Heavy rains, flooding [and] the destruction of homes and farmland, will increase the likelihood of the virus spreading, particularly in densely populated areas like the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar,” ActionAid said.
“It will also undoubtedly increase the number of lives and livelihoods already lost to this pandemic.”
source https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/20/super-cyclone-amphan-evacuations-in-india-and-bangladesh-slowed-by-virus
0 تعليقات