A man pulls a fishing boat to a sea shore as a preventive measure during rainfall in Kuakata on May 26, 2024, ahead of cyclone Remal's landfall in Bangladesh. - AFP
PATUAKHALI, Bangladesh:Tens of thousands of Bangladeshis left their coastal villages Sunday (May 26) for concrete storm shelters further inland as the low-lying nation prepared for the expected landfall of an intense cyclone, officials said.
Cyclone Remal is set to hit the southern coast and parts of neighbouring India on Sunday evening, with Bangladesh's weather department predicting crashing waves and howling gales with gusts of up to 130km (81 miles) per hour.
Cyclones have killed hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh in recent decades, but the number of superstorms hitting its low-lying, densely populated coast have increased sharply -- from one a year to as many as three -- due to the impact of climate change.
"The cyclone could unleash a storm surge of up to 12 feet (four metres) above normal astronomical tide, which can be dangerous," senior weather official Muhammad Abul Kalam Mallik told AFP.
Most of Bangladesh's coastal areas are a metre or two above sea level and high storm surges can devastate villages.
Authorities have raised the danger signal to its highest level, warning fishermen against going to the sea and triggering an evacuation order for those in at-risk areas.
As people fled, police said that a heavily laden ferry carrying more than 50 passengers -- double its capacity -- was swamped by rough waters and sank near Mongla, a port in the expected path of the storm.
"At least 13 people were injured and were taken to a hospital," local police chief Mushfiqur Rahman Tushar told AFP, adding that other boats plucked the passengers to safety.
"Our plan is to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people from unsafe and vulnerable homes to the cyclone shelters," the government's disaster management secretary Kamrul Hasan told AFP.
The authorities have mobilised tens of thousands of volunteers to alert people to the danger.
He said some 4,000 cyclone shelters have been readied along the country's lengthy coast on the Bay of Bengal, with the cyclone expected to hit a 220-kilometre stretch from India's Sagar Island to Khepupara in Bangladesh.
The state-run Bangladesh Meteorological Department said Cyclone Remal would make landfall Sunday between 6pm and midnight (1200-1800 GMT). - AFP
