Bangladesh evacuates thousands as storm nears

Bangladesh evacuates thousands as storm nears
Thu Nov 15, 2007 1:04am EST
By Anis Ahmed

DHAKA (Reuters) - Thousands of families have been evacuated from their homes over a dozen coastal districts of Bangladesh as a severe cyclone heads in from the Bay of Bengal, officials said on Thursday.

The storm, classified category 4 by the weather tracker Tropical Storm Risk, would likely make landfall in Bangladesh, any time from around 2 p.m. (0800 GMT) packing winds more than 210 km (130 miles) per hour.

It may also hit parts of eastern India and Myanmar, meteorology officials said.
In Chittagong, officials said they were "panicked" because of the unusual calm before the store.
"This suggests the core of the storm has been static, but may suddenly move with super speed before it finally slams the shores," one met official said on Thursday.

"People with past experience of major cyclones also feel the same way," said a journalist at Barisal coastal town.

The Bangladesh Meteorology Department raised danger signal number 10, the highest, at Mongla, Bangladesh's second main sea port, and number 9 at Chittagong and Cox's Bazar, the main port and prime tourist resort respectively.

It said the storm was centered nearly 500 km (300 miles) from the Bangladesh coast early on Thursday, and was likely to intensify further. Continued...

May they pass through this horrible event safely. May god save poor people and all those in the danger areas.

oh noh! khobor e sunlam! already here one thousand died in last rain! abar low pressure!! why cant it be destroyed in bay of bengal itself

Super cyclone ‘Sidr’ heading towards W Bengal, Bangladesh Zeenews Bureau

Kolkata, Nov 15: A super cyclone on the scale of the one that devastated Orissa eight years ago is heading towards the West Bengal-Bangladesh coast and is expected to hit land near the Sagar Islands. Impending news of Cyclone Sidr has lead to evacuation of thousands of people living in coastal areas of the two countries since Wednesday.

Elaborating on the situation, State Home Secretary P R Roy said that the cyclone, which lay centred north of Andaman Islands has changed direction and is now heading towards coastal areas of West Bengal and Bangladesh.

Meanwhile in Bangladesh that has a history of braving cyclones, the administration is on high alert. Chittagong airport and sea port were also closed, officials said. In 1970, some half a million people died when a cyclone hit the impoverished country, while an estimated 138,000 people died as a result of a cyclonic tidal wave in 1991.

Although the cyclone has changed course and has spared the Orissa coast still the state government is on high alert.

The director of the Bhubaneswar Meteorological Centre, S.C. Sahu, said, “The possibility of the very severe cyclonic storm hitting the Orissa coast directly appears almost nil. But we are closely monitoring the path and trying to know the intensity of its impact on Orissa.” Medium to heavy rains are likely to occur in many parts of coastal Orissa from Thursday afternoon, he added.

The state government has asked the collectors of coastal districts to keep relief teams ready. A cyclone monitoring cell has begun functioning in the Orissa secretariat.


************************************************** *****************************

India, Bangladesh Order Coastal Evacuations as Storm Approaches

By Jay Shankar and Aaron Sheldrick

Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Indian and Bangladeshi authorities ordered thousands of people to evacuate as Tropical Cyclone Sidr headed across the Bay of Bengal toward the coast with winds of 241 kilometers (150 miles) per hour.
The eye of Sidr, a Category 4 storm, was 533 kilometers south of Kolkata at 5:30 a.m. local time today, according to the latest advisory by the U.S. Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center. The storm was moving north at 22 kilometers an hour.

The cyclone is expected to maintain strength as it approaches Kolkata, a city of 14.3 million people formerly known as Calcutta, and Bangladesh late tomorrow or early Nov. 17. Northeastern India and Bangladesh are regularly hit by cyclones that form in the Bay of Bengal, bringing flooding and devastation to local communities. A cyclone that hit near Cox's Bazaar in Bangladesh left 138,000 people dead in 1991, according to the New York Times.

At least one fisherman was killed and about 100 others were listed as missing in the region of Cox's Bazaar after Tropical Cyclone Akash came ashore in May. Sidr is the sixth storm of the north Indian Ocean cyclone season.

Authorities ordered people to evacuate coastal areas near Cox's Bazaar, Mongla and Chittagong and issued the highest alert in sixteen districts, K.H. Massod, director general of disaster management in Bangladesh, said by telephone today. In India, authorities issued warnings to residents of Kolkata, the country's third-biggest city, and nearby coastal towns and villages.

Finding Shelter

``People have been told to move to government shelters and fishermen are being told not to venture into the seas,'' Atanu Purkayastha, relief commissioner of India's West Bengal state government, said by telephone.

In neighboring Orissa, four coastal districts were put on alert, K.L. Mishra, deputy general manager of the state's disaster management office, said by telephone.

``Food stocks have been rushed to these districts and relief materials such as blankets and temporary shelters are being readied,'' he said. About 9,000 people were killed in Orissa when a cyclone hit the state in 1999, Mishra added.

Sidr's winds were gusting to 296 kilometers per hour and waves in the vicinity of the storm's eye were 12 meters (40 feet) high, according to the advisory on the warning center's Web site.

Sidr may produce a storm surge as high as 5.5 meters when it comes ashore in one of the most flood-prone areas in the world. The border area of India and Bangladesh is where the deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers meet.

Classifications

In the Indian Ocean, the U.S. Navy uses the term tropical cyclone to describe all large circular weather systems built around an area of low pressure.

That differs from its conventions for the Pacific, where a three-level system is used. Cyclonic storms with winds less than 62 kilometers per hour are classified as tropical depressions, winds between 63 and 118 kilometers per hour are classified as tropical storms and winds of 119 kilometers per hour and greater are typhoons.

In the Atlantic, U.S. meteorologists refer to typhoons as hurricanes and classify them according to the five-tier Saffir- Simpson scale. Category 4 storms have winds of between 210 and 249 kilometers per hour.

my prayers are with them

yeah .. as tanna said .... lets pray for all of them who r in deneger .

let's hope n pray that it dies down or at least changes its course...still have bad memories frm 91 ghurnijhor in ctg...

[IMG]file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/ZACKE%7E1/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot-11.jpg[/IMG]Cyclone Sidr destroys homes in Bangladesh


(Khan Godhuly/AFP/Getty)



People head for a cyclone shelter in the Khulna district, 320km south of Dhaka, as the storm sweeps across Bangladesh




Steve Bird



A fierce cyclone that has whipped up tidal waves is wreaking havoc and destruction on Bangladesh’s southwestern coast today.
Homes have been wiped out and trees uprooted in what officials described as the worst storm in more than 15 years.


The eye of Cyclone Sidr, visible in satellite images as a colossal swirling white mass bearing north from the Bay of Bengal, hit land in an impoverished coastal area near Bangladesh’s border with India.
Samarendra Karmakar, the head of the Bangladeshi meteorological department, said the storm matched one in 1991 that triggered a tidal wave that killed an estimated 138,000 people.
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However he added he was optimistic that, this time around, a major effort to evacuate villages and place people in special shelters could mean low-lying Bangladesh - one of the world’s poorest countries - would escape significant loss of life.


“The cyclone has battered Bangladeshi coastal areas. The velocity of the wind in that area is 220 to 240 kilometres (140 to 155 miles and hour),” he said.


“It is not less severe than the 1991 cyclone, in some places it is more severe. But we are expecting less casualties this time because the government took early measures. We alerted people to be evacuated early."
Bangladesh’s worst cyclone disaster was in 1970, when some half a million people died.
Officials in both Bangladesh and across the border in India have been evacuating hundreds of thousands of people from the area over the past 48 hours.


Mr Karmakar said rivers in the Sunderbans area, a vast mangrove forest straddling the India-Bangladesh border and the natural habitat of endangered Royal Bengal tigers, were also swelling fast as the storm moved north in the direction of the capital Dhaka.


An official in Barisal, 120 kilometres south of Dhaka, spoke of severe destruction.
“Many trees have been uprooted and houses and schools blown away. There are no reports of deaths so far. We can not get out to get much information because of the severe storm,” Mostofa Kamal, a district relief and rehabilitation officer, told AFP by telephone.


“The houses are made of only tin, bamboo and straw, which cannot withstand storms,” explained Mohammad Monjur-e-Elahi, another Bangladeshi district administrator.


Much of Bangladesh’s south and centre has bunkered down for the storm, with even the country’s main sea port at Chittagong, to the east of the cyclone’s path, also shut down.


Officials were also on high alert in neighbouring India’s coastal states of West Bengal and Orissa.
“The cyclone has a diameter of about 500 kilometres with a wall of clouds about 200 kilometres tall,” Ladu Ram Meena, deputy director of the weather centre for India’s eastern region.


Authorities in India have been told to halt rail and other transportation in some areas due to the likelihood of heavy floods.


Large-scale damage to power and communication lines was also expected.


“We have kept the army on standby,” Ashim Dasgupta , West Bengal Finance Minister, said.
Cyclone Sidr is expected to fizzle out on Saturday over India’s north eastern state of Assam and just south of the mountain kingdom of Bhutan.

this is Sooo bad.. really.. as far as i kno, there hasnt been a storm like this in yearss!! i just hope people survive.