Cyclone heads towards Myanmar, Bangladesh

Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated from the coasts of Myanmar and Bangladesh yesterday as the region’s most powerful cyclone for over a decade churned across the Bay of Bengal.
Cyclone Mocha was packing winds of up to 240kph (149mph), according to the Zoom Earth website, which classed it as a Super Cyclone.
A dangerous category four on the Saffir-Simpson scale, it was expected to weaken before making landfall this morning between Cox’s Bazar, where nearly 1mn Rohingya refugees live in camps largely made up of flimsy shelters, and Sittwe on Myanmar’s western Rakhine coast.
Bangladeshi authorities have moved 190,000 people in Cox’s Bazar and nearly 100,000 in Chittagong to safety, divisional commissioner Aminur Rahman told AFP late yesterday.
“They were evacuated to nearly 4,000 cyclone shelters,” he said.
Forecasters in Dhaka were predicting a storm surge up to nearly 4m (12’) high, which could inundate low-lying coastal and riverine villages.
Mohamed Shamsud Douza, a government official responsible for refugees, said: “We are focusing on saving lives ... people who are at risk of landslides will be evacuated.”
Thousands of community workers and volunteers had already been deployed, alongside medical and rescue personnel who are on stand-by, he said.
On the other side of the border, Sittwe residents piled possessions and pets into cars, trucks and tuk-tuks and headed for higher ground yesterday, AFP reporters saw.
“We have our grandma in our family and we have to take care of her,” Khine Min told AFP from a truck packed with his relatives on a road out of the state capital. “There is only one man left in Sittwe to take care of our homes.”
Shops and markets in the town of about 150,000 people were shuttered, with many locals sheltering in monasteries.
Kyaw Tin, 40, said he could not leave the area as his son was in a local hospital.
“I hope this cyclone won’t come to our state. But if this fate happens we can’t ignore it,” he said.
“I’m worried that this cyclone will affect our state just like Nargis did,” he added – a 2008 storm that killed more than 130,000 people.
Myanmar’s junta authorities were supervising evacuations from villages along the Rakhine coast, state media reported on Friday.
Myanmar Airways International said all its flights to Rakhine state had been suspended until tomorrow.
The Myanmar Red Cross Society said it is “preparing for a major emergency response”.
The World Food Programme said it was preparing food and relief supplies that could help more than 400,000 people in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and surrounding areas for a month.
“Everyone is trying to leave town since yesterday afternoon,” said a 20-year-old resident of Rakhine’s capital Sittwe, asking not to be named. “Not many people remain in my street, just my family.”
In Bangladesh, authorities have banned the Rohingya refugees from constructing concrete homes, fearing that it may incentivise them to settle permanently rather than return to Myanmar, which they fled five years ago following a brutal military crackdown.
“We live in houses made of tarpaulin and bamboo,” said refugee Enam Ahmed, at the Nayapara camp near the border town of Teknaf. “We are scared. We don’t know where we will be sheltered.”
The camps are generally slightly inland, but most of them are built on hillsides, exposing them to the threat of landslides.
Forecasters expect the cyclone to bring a deluge of rain, which can trigger landslips.
Officials moved to evacuate Rohingya refugees from “risky areas” to community centres and more solid structures such as schools, but Bangladesh’s deputy refugee commissioner Shamsud Douza told AFP: “All the Rohingya in the camps are at risk.”
Hundreds of people also fled Saint Martin’s island, a local resort area right in the storm’s path, with thousands more moving to cyclone shelters on the coral outcrop.
“Cyclone Mocha is the most powerful storm since Cyclone Sidr,” Azizur Rahman, the head of Bangladesh’s Meteorological Department, told AFP.
That cyclone hit Bangladesh’s southern coast in November 2007, killing more than 3,000 people and causing billions of dollars in damage.
Rohingya living in displacement camps inside Myanmar were also bracing for the storm.
“We are very worried. We can be in danger if the water level increases,” said a camp leader near Kyaukphyu in Rakhine state, who asked not to be named for fear of repercussions from the junta. “There are about 1000 people at the camp ... the authorities only gave us rice bags, oil and five life jackets. Local authorities haven’t arranged any place for us.”
Operations were suspended at Bangladesh’s largest seaport, Chittagong, with boat transport and fishing also halted.