More than 115,000 flee as Cyclone Remal approaches Bangladesh
Bangladesh: More than 115,000 Bangladeshis left their coastal villages on Sunday for concrete storm shelters further inland as the low-lying nation prepared for crashing waves when a cyclone makes landfall, 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 howling gales and gusts of up to 130 kilometres (81 miles) per hour.
Cyclones have killed hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh in recent decades, but the number of superstorms hitting its densely populated coast has 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.
«We are terrified», said 35-year-old fisherman Yusuf Fakir at Kuakata, a town on the very southern tip of Bangladesh — right in the predicted route of the storm.
He has sent his wife and children to a relative's home inland while he stays to look after their belongings.
«Our daily life is disrupted,» he
