High tidal surges inundate coastal areas
At least nine were killed on Friday in wall collapses, lightning strike, tidal surges and trawler capsize during downpour began on Thursday and continued till Friday afternoon.
Tidal surges whipped up about seven feet high by
squally weather influenced by a depression in the Bay of Bengal also inundated many coastal areas and strained normal life.
During the incessant rainfall, a wall collapsed at Khilkhet in Dhaka, killing two, and another wall collapsed in Barguna, killing two more.
Three were killed in lightning strike in Bagerhat, a boy was washed away by tidal surges in Barguna and a man went missing as a trawler capsized in Cox’s Bazar.
The Met Office in Dhaka said the depression crossed past the Barisal coast about 6:00pm on Friday resulting into a land depression.
The Met Office asked all maritime ports to flag local cautionary Signal 3 as the ports are threatened by squally weather which is likely to whip surges up to four feet high.
The wall collapse caused by the downpour in Dhaka about 2:00pm killed a 14-year-old boy of a roadside tea stall and a young girl.
Ratan and Sumi Akhter were severely injured when a wall fell on them at Khanpara. They died on their way to hospital, local people said.
Minara, 28 and Naren, 30, died in the wall collapse in Barguna. A boy named Safin, 5, was washed away by tidal surges in another incident in the district.
Reports reaching from Bagerhat said three people, including Ranju Mollah, 18, and Moir Mollah, 24, who were brothers and residents of Kahalu at Mollahat, died by lightning strike in the afternoon.
The government on Friday evening cancelled holidays Department of Public Health Engineering employees in offices in coastal districts to ensure relief supplies to the areas that became inundated. The decision will remain in force until further notice, officials said. The department has also opened a control room in Dhaka to monitor the situation.
Heavy rainfall inundated low-lying areas in Cox’s Bazar, Chittagong, Noakhali, Feni, Lakshmipur, Bhola, Barisal, Patuakhali, Barguna, Chandpur, Pirojpur, Jhalakati, Bagerhat, Khulna, Satkhira and their offshore islands and chars.
Overnight downpour also caused inundation of many roads in Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi, Sylhet, Khulna, Barisal and other district towns.
The highways faced tailback while flights from Dhaka and Chittagong airports were cancelled and delayed for hours on Friday.
In the capital, roads remained deserted compared with the usual traffic on usual Fridays. A large number of vehicles, including CNG-run three-wheelers stopped midway in the rainwater that collected on the roads.
Road stretches at Banani, Gulshan, Bijoy Sarani, Sheraton crossing, Malibagh, Shantinagar crossing, Bayley Road, Dainik Bangla crossing, Motijheel and Tikatuli remained inundated.
The Dhaka WASA put in special efforts to rid of road stretches in areas such as Shantinagar, Fakirapool and Rajarbagh of collected water.
Officials of WASA control room in Dhaka told New Age about 9:00pm water that collected at Kazirgaon at Mirpur had not been removed by the time.
Many areas in Chittagong such as Bahaddarhat, Muradpur, Chawkbazar, Sholashahar, Agrabad Commercial Area, Shulukbahar, Badurtala, Bakalia, Halishahar Housing Estate and commercial district of Chaktai-Khatunganj faced water stagnation.
Traffic was also affected because of the inundation of many roads in areas such as Agrabad Access Road, Port Connecting Road, Chawkbazar DC Road, Sheikh Mujib Road and CDA Avenue.
The New Age correspondent in Khulna said people in Aila-affected areas, panicked by the non-stop rainfall and tidal surges, hurriedly headed for cyclone shelters and other safe places.
‘As water started rushing in over vast expanse of land, we left houses for cyclone shelters in fear of a second disaster like Aila,’ said 60-year-old Abu Bakar, a resident of Nalian at Dacope in the district.
The Met Office in Khulna recorded 146mm of rainfall between 6:00am on Thursday and Friday noon.
Vast areas of the upazila headquarters, Maharajpur and Dakhkhin Bedkashi of Koyra and Sutarkhali and Kamarkhola went under four to five feet-high water, local people said.
‘The rivers are flowing in waves five to six feet high,’ said Dacope upazila council’s vice-chairman Jayanti Rani Biswas.
Four breaches in the River Shibsha embankment and ne in the River Dhaka embankment inundated vast areas at Kaminibasia, Kamarkhola, Banishata and Tildanga of Dacope.
‘Embankment has breached at least at five points because of high tide and surges,’ she said. Road communications in most of the areas collapsed.
Jayanti said the local people were trying to mend the breaches, keeping their elders, women and children in cyclone shelters and on high places.
A release jointly issued by Aila Durgata Sanghati Mancha and Upakuliya Beribandh Nirman Ganasangram Committee demanded emergency relief supplies for the affected people and reconstruction of the embankments that breached.
The Dacope upazila nirbahi officer, Kazi Atiur Rahman, told New Age the people, besides trying to move out to safe places and cyclone shelters, had already started mending the embankments on their own.
The correspondent in Barisal said many roads in the city and low-lying areas went under rainwater in the absence of proper drainage and sewerage.
Erosion of the eastern bank of the River Kirtankhola took a serious turn because of the strong current.
River port authorities in the Barisal region on Thursday stopped the plying of motor launches less than 65 feet long because of the inclement weather, BIWTC deputy director Kazi Wakil Newaz said.
Other river transports such as triple-deck launches on the Barisal–Dhaka route were asked to keep cautious, he said.
Ferry services at Paturia and Daulatdia had been disrupted since Thursday night, causing long queues of vehicles on two sides on the River Padma.
BIWTC manager Ashraf Ullah Khan said the problem intensified as three ferries — Keramat Ali, Amanat Shah and Bir Shreshtha Hamidur Rahman — went out of order in six hours on Thursday.
He said only four out of the 12 Ro/Ro ferries and a K-type ferry were in operation at Aricha on Friday.
At least 400 trucks and 100 buses remained stranded at the Paturia ferry point around 8:00pm on Friday. He said the situation was the same at Daulatdia.
Ferry movement on the Mawa-Kewrakandi route was also disrupted, officials said.
