Dhaka, Oct 25 (EFE).- At least three people died and several were injured as Cyclone Hamoon made landfall in Bangladesh in the early hours of Wednesday after forcing the authorities to evacuate more than 100,000 people.
“So far, we have received news of three deaths from the impact of the cyclone, all in Cox’s Bazar district. We are now waiting for details and counting damages,” Mizanur Rahman, head of Bangladesh’s Disaster Management Department, told EFE.
Officials at the Bangladesh Meteorological Department said that the cyclone took nearly seven hours to cross the country after its frontal part began to hit the coastline at about 6pm local time on Tuesday.
“The cyclone completed the crossing of the coastline at about 1:00am. Everything is now normal,” meteorologist Bazlur Rashid told EFE.
Accompanied by strong winds, the cyclone earlier destroyed the roofs of many houses, uprooted trees, and damaged electricity poles, mostly in island areas of coastal Cox’s Bazar district, home to nearly one million Rohingya refugees.
Miky Marma, the administrative head of the subdistrict of Maheshkhali under Cox’s Bazar in the southeast of the country, confirmed the death of at least one person in her area by a falling tree and the injuries of seven people.
“Now we are living in darkness, the electricity supply was cut off after the cyclone hit the area at night,” the official said at night.
Bangladeshi authorities said they had evacuated more than 110,000 people to various cyclone shelters, mostly in the southeastern districts of Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar, although the initial plan was to evacuate 1.5 million people.
“We were prepared for 1.5 million, but it was not necessary after the cyclone changed direction. Initially, we started evacuating people in eleven districts. In the end, the evacuation took place mainly in Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar,” the head of the Bangladesh Cyclone Preparedness Program, Ahmadul Haque, told EFE.
This is the second cyclone to form this year in the Bay of Bengal, after Cyclone Mocha hit the country in May, destroying thousands of homes.
Cyclones typically hit the Bay of Bengal between April and May and October and November.
In May 2020, super cyclone Amphan caused more than a hundred deaths between Bangladesh and India, in one of the worst natural disasters of this type in years. EFE
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