Cyclone floods coastal districts of Bangladesh, damages thousands of homes

The deadly Cyclone Amphan has left swathes of Bangladesh’s coastal region inundated and tens of thousands of homes damaged, some of them completely destroyed.

The storm, which wreaked havoc on India’s West Bengal on Wednesday night, damaged 150 kilometres of dams in the coastal districts of Bangladesh, causing collapses at a number of places, an official said.

Khulna was most affected, while reports of flooding due to dam breaches also came from Barishal and Chattogram, said Abu Bakr Siddique, the supervising engineer of Water Development Board’s monitoring department.

The fish enclosures in Khulna were also flooded in Khulna, the district police’s spokesman Md Anisur Rahman said. The most affected areas included Koira and Dacope near the Sundarbans.

At least 18,000 homes were damaged due to fierce wind gusts and storm surge in the district, he said. Dams collapsed at dozens of points.

Cyclone Amphan tore down homes as it ripped through Nildumur Kheya Ghat in Satkhira’s Shyamnagar on Wednesday. Photo: Tomzid Mollick

More than 350 homes were completely destroyed in Bagerhat, where the Bangladesh portion of the Sundarbans is situated, officials said. Over 4,000 fish enclosures and 4,500 homes were also damaged in the district.

Md Moinuddin Khan, the forest conservator of Khulna, said the Forest Department was yet to assess the extent of the damage of wildlife. But it appeared the storm could not do as much harm as feared to the wildlife of the world’s largest mangrove forest, he added.

He also said 80 freshwater ponds in the Sundarban’s were salinated by the flooding.