Tropical cyclones from the Bay of Bengal accompanied by storm surges are one of the major disasters in Bangladesh. The country is one of the worst sufferers of all cyclonic casualties in the world. The high number of casualties is due to the fact that cyclones are always associated with storm surges. Storm surge height in excess of 9m is not uncommon in this region. For example, the 1876 cyclone had a surge height of 13.6 m and in 1970 the height was 9.11 m (WARPO, 2005). In fact, the 1970 Cyclone is the deadliest Cyclone that has hit Bangladesh coastline. With a wind-speed of about 224 km per hour and associated storm surge of 6.1 to 9.11 Metre, it was responsible for death of about 300,000 people. A list of devastating cyclones is given in Table 1. |
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Major cyclones that hit the Bangladesh coast | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Source: Bangladesh Meteorological Department 2007 |
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The cyclone sidr-2007 erupted from the Bay of Bengal packing winds of 240 kilometers per hour, swept through the southwestern coastal areas within 155-miles radius of its eye with heavy rain and storm surges reached up to 15-20 feet high in some places on 15th November'07 . According to Bangladesh Metrological Department, the Sidr's eye crossed the Khulna-Barisal coast near the Sunderbans mangrove forests around 9:30 pm ,while it crossed over the Baleshwar River in Barguna district at mid night . The coastal districts of Barisal Patuakhali, Borguna, Pirojpur, Jhalkthi, Bhola, Bagerhat, Khulna, Satkhira, Shariatpur, Chittagong and Cox’sbazar and their offshore islands and chars received the major destructions by the SIDR. Out of 12 severely affected districts 4 are the worst affected, these are Bagerhat, Barguna, Perojpur and Patuakhali. |
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As on the reporting period it was observed that 3,363 peoples are dead, 55,282 are injured. Approximately 5,63,877 houses are totally destroyed and 9,55,065 houses are partly damaged. It is also reported that 186,883 hectare of crop areas are fully and 498,645 hectare area partly damaged by the SIDR’2007. |
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Damage & Loss at a Glance: |
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Govt. immediate response: The government in coordination with NGOs and international organizations, has done a commendable job in responding to the cyclone emergency and assisting the affected population. The MoFDM activated emergency response committees at the district, Upzilla, and Union levels and established an operations center in Dhaka to coordinate relief activities. Military personnel were deployed to assist with rescue operations and the distribution of food and relief services | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
It may pointed out that due to increase the number of population and the cattle heads, it has become essential to construct at least 2000 nos. of disaster shelters & killas in the coastal areas. Ministry of Primary & Mass Education has taken-up a programme under the project title "Primary Education Development Programme-2 (PEDP-2) " to construct 507 nos. of school-cum-shelter in the coastal areas. It is expected that about 300 shelters will also be constructed by the others Ministries, Divisions, Organizations and NGOs. Considering this the DM&RD has decided to construct the remaining 1200 Nos. of disaster shelters and killas as per recommendations of the reports of the technical committee |