The country initiated an intensive evacuation campaign today, aiming to relocate half a million people to safety as the Met Office increased its warning signal for Cox’s Bazar and other districts as the deadly cyclone Mocha approaches with greater force.
“Cyclone ‘Mocha’ is coming. We’ve kept ready the cyclone centres and taken all types of preparations to tackle it,” Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said while opening Institution of Engineers convention in the city.
She warned that the storm might disrupt electricity and gas supply, as well as cause water stagnation in coastal areas, causing temporary hardships, and asked everyone to prepare for the consequences.
The Cox’s Bazar region is likely to take the brunt of the storm, and officials said substantial preparations were in place.
“The district administration has turned social, educational and religious institutions as makeshift shelters alongside 576 designated cyclone shelters in Cox’s Bazar to accommodate over half a million people,” deputy commissioner or administrative chief of the coastal district Muhammad Shahin Imran told reporters.
He stated that over 8,600 Red Crescent volunteers and others participated in a campaign encouraging individuals at risk to move to safety alongside government officials, while the district administration mobilized transports to bring them to cyclone shelters.
The news came as the Met Office raised the “great danger signal no 8 to 10” on a scale of 10 for Cox’s Bazar and surrounding regions when the Mocha approached the Cox’s Bazar coast between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Sunday.
“The cyclone is approaching at a speed of 8 to 10 kilometres speed with winds packing up to 175 kilomtres while during the landfall the speed could be as high as 190 kilomtres,” a met office spokesman told newsmen.
“The cyclone could cause tidal surges from 8 to 12 feet beyond the normal tide.”
He said the met office heightened the warning signal to the highest level in the scale of 10 to indicate its wraths and feared the Saint Martin’s island, Teknaf and Cox’s Bazar town to bear the worst brunt of the storm and northern Myanmar coast.
Hundreds of people left St. Martin’s as the most violent hurricane in over two decades barreled towards the shores of Bangladesh and neighboring Myanmar.
The BSS Cox’s Bazar correspondent stated that a state of calm has been seen in the town since the morning amid drizzles, while people of the town’s low lying sections and nearby areas were migrating to cyclone shelters.
He said that the Pouro Preparatory High School in town alone housed around 200 persons from the coastal resort’s low-lying Samity Para region.
