devastation
Cyclone Mocha hits Myanmar and Bangladesh
In this video still, locals walk on a road flooded by heavy rain as Cyclone Mocha approaches Myanmar. photo
© Uncredited/AP/dpa
Ironically, the crisis country Myanmar is on the route of a violent cyclone. The people there have already lost almost everything because of a brutal military junta. Bangladesh is also affected by “Mocha”.
The powerful cyclone “Mocha” made landfall with heavy rain and strong winds on the west coast of Myanmar and Bangladesh and caused severe devastation. The GDACS disaster warning system (Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System) had previously put the hurricane on red alert and predicted destructive wind speeds of up to 259 kilometers per hour.
According to local media reports, at least five people were killed in Myanmar on Sunday. Three died from falling trees, a couple was buried in their home by a landslide.
“Mocha” had been gaining strength over the Bay of Bengal for days. The city of Sittwe and Rakhine State in Myanmar have been particularly hard hit. “We knew the storm would be strong, but it’s even stronger than we expected,” Khin Maung Lay, a resident of Sittwe, told German Press Agency. Houses are under water and the telephone and internet lines have collapsed. “We need help. Some old people are stuck.”
Covered houses – fallen trees
The extent of the damage was unclear. Videos distributed on the Internet showed covered houses and fallen trees. In Rakhine State alone, 100,000 people had been taken from the coast to safer areas in advance. Armed groups from the region, who have been fighting the military for years, also helped.
The crisis-ridden country of Myanmar has been engulfed in chaos and violence since a coup two years ago. The military junta oppresses the population and rules with an iron fist. More than a million people are already living as displaced persons in their own country, often in emergency shelters. Humanitarian organizations warned that the tropical storm could significantly worsen the already difficult situation for the people. “For a cyclone to hit an area that already has such great humanitarian needs is a nightmare scenario,” said Ramanathan Balakrishnan of the United Nations in Myanmar.
The situation in Bangladesh
Sittwe is only about 180 kilometers as the crow flies southeast of the city of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where “Mocha” also raged. Around a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar live there in makeshift shelters. More than 300,000 people had been evacuated in advance. All others have been urged to stay away from shores because of possible violent tidal waves.
Recently, however, the storm in Bangladesh seemed to have lost some of its speed, said local weather forecaster Azizur Rahman. The risk is now significantly lower than in neighboring Myanmar, to which the center of the cyclone has shifted. Nevertheless, according to initial estimates, more than 10,000 houses were damaged in the country, as a local official said on Sunday evening. There was initially no information about damage in the Rohingya refugee camps. There were also no reports of deaths related to the storm in the country on Sunday.
Many in the region had feared that “Mocha” could have the same terrible effects as cyclone “Nargis” 15 years ago: On May 2nd and 3rd, 2008, the tropical storm in Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Delta was estimated to have killed almost 140,000 people cracked. The devastation was tremendous.