Home ›› 21 Jun 2022 ›› Front
With each passing day, the flood situation continues to worsen further in the country’s northeastern and northern regions as the water levels of all major rivers maintain a rising trend.
As a result on Monday, fresh areas were flooded in Kurigram, Gaibandha, Lalmonirhat, Bogura, Sirajganj, Jamalpur, Sirajganj, Habiganj, Netrokona, Kishoreganj, and Feni’s Fulgazi, in addition to the devastating situation that has been prevailing in Sylhet and Sunamganj since Thursday.
Farmlands in the affected areas have been severely damaged, with vast swaths of standing crops being washed away by the onrush of floodwater.
The total loss from crops, as well as from homes, personal belongings, and farm animals, is expected to reach crores of taka.
A humanitarian crisis has arisen in these areas, with millions seeking refuge on high ground and sleeping under the open sky with no access to food, safe drinking water, or sanitation facilities.
To make matters worse, the flood shelters in Sylhet and Sunamganj have all run out of room, and the relief assistance available is not sufficient to sustain the people seeking refuge over there.
As if things weren’t bad enough, multiple robberies have been reported in the flood-affected in these two districts.
District police sources said that the police were going to the spots after receiving information from several areas.
Meanwhile, there have been reports from the Sunamganj district that people in the flood-affected areas are struggling to put their loved ones to rest.
Residents have now run out of dry places to bury their dead, with 90 per cent of their land area now under water owing to the widespread flooding across the region.
More rains to come
Significant rainfall was recorded at some stations in different districts during the last 24 hours ending at 9 am on Monday, the bulletin added.
A total of 242 millimetres (mm) of rainfall was recorded at Chattogram, 175mm in Parshuram (Feni), 155mm at Rangamati, 146mm at Teknaf, 100mm at Cumilla, 92mm at Narayanhat (Chattagram), 95mm at Bandarban, 90mm at Panchpukuria (Chattogram) and 88mm at Cox’s Bazar.
“According to the weather forecast of meteorological agencies, there is a chance of medium to heavy rainfall in places of the northern and north-eastern regions of the country, along with adjoining states of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Sub-Himalayan West Bengal in the next 48 hours. As a result, the Brahmaputra-Jamuna, Ganges-Padma, Dharla, Dudkumar, and all other major rivers may continue rising in the next 48 hours. Heavy rainfall in Meghalaya state is unlikely,” the FFWC statement added.
The FFWC suggested that the flood situation in Sylhet, Sunamganj, and Netrokona districts may remain steady in the next 24 hours.
The flood condition may deteriorate in the low-lying areas of Lalmonirhat, Nilphamari, Rangpur, Kurigram, Gaibandha, Bogra, Sirajganj, Jamalpur and Tangail, while in the next 24 hours, there is a chance of very heavy rainfall in the south-eastern parts of the country, the FFWC statement added.
The major rivers of Chattogram, Cox’s Bazar, Rangamati, and Bandarban may rise rapidly in this period, the centre added.
Situation to worsen
“As all major rivers in the country are in a rising trend, the flood situation is deteriorating in the northeastern and northern regions further,” Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre (FFWC) spokesman Md Arifuzzaman Bhuyan told BSS.
“Water now continues to surpass much above the danger lines in two of the country’s four major river basins... the situation is worse than it was in 2004,” he said.
Bhuiyan, an FFWC executive engineer, said “heavy downpours worsened the flood situation, which is gradually deteriorating in the northern and north-eastern parts of Bangladesh”.
He said the trend was worsening as the forecasts suggested heavy rainfall would continue for the next couple of days both in the upstream Meghalaya, Assam and western Himalayan regions of India alongside Bangladesh.
Monsoon rains and gushing waters from upstream India overnight worsened Bangladesh’s flood situation, with experts calling it the worst since 2004.
Officials and reports suggest nearly six million people were marooned in their nearly inundated homes or were forced to take makeshift refuge elsewhere as the water levels in rivers in the northeastern and northern regions continued to rise.
Many people were forced to initially take refuge on their rooftops amid gushing rising waters until rescue boats arrived at many places in Sunamganj.
The incessant downpours aggravated affected people’s miseries while the deluge by now has severed entirely the road links of northeastern Sunamganj district from the rest of the country and forced authorities to shut down the Osmani International Airport in neighbouring Sylhet after water submerged its runway.
Flood waters engulfed several power stations, forcing authorities to shut down the facilities, subsequently affecting internet and mobile phone communications as well, and due to the shutdowns, the entire Sunamganj district remained beyond power supplies for the last two days.
The reports said the power outage forced people to depend on candles and kerosene-lit lamps, a situation that soared their prices in many places. Bangladesh authorities earlier called out army troops to aid the civil administration in evacuating people or rescuing marooned people, while navy and air force units were subsequently called out, particularly in the northeastern Sylhet region, as it now appeared as if it was a sea.
According to district administration officials, a 35-member naval team began rescue operations with one Coast Guard cruise and two Air Force helicopters.
“A 60-member navy contingent and two more cruises are expected to join the rescue operations in Sylhet and Sunamganj,” deputy commissioner of Sylhet district Md Mojibor Rahman said.
Reports said all the upazilas and half of Sylhet city, all upazilas and municipalities of Sunamganj district, the Sylhet-Sunamganj highway and the Sylhet-Bholaganj Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman highway are already submerged.
Department of Agriculture Extension Deputy Director (In-charge) Zakia Sultana said due to the rise of floodwater, more standing crops have been submerged in the area.
Deltaic Bangladesh is crisscrossed by 56 major rivers and several hundred tributaries with hydrologists dividing the country into four major basins, with current flooding first exposed to its wraths in the northwestern region covered under the Meghna Basin.
“The situation in Brahmaputra Basin aggravated overnight” as the waters surpassed the danger marks at many places in northern and some northwestern districts,” a FFWC official said.
Govt allocates rice, cash aid
In the meantime, the government has allocated a total of 2,220 tonnes of rice, Tk 3.86 crore in cash and 71,000 packets of dry and other food items for flood-hit 11 districts of the country.
The Disaster Management and Relief Ministry gave the allocation in favour of the deputy commissioners from May 17 to June 20 as immediate humanitarian assistance in flood-hit areas, said a press release on Monday.
