‘Super cyclone’ Amphan barrels towards BD, India

KHULNA, Bangladesh: Several million people battened down on Wednesday as the outer edges of the fiercest cyclone in decades rattled Bangladesh and eastern India, potentially bringing widespread destruction and misery in its wake.

As the eye of Amphan fast approached, the Bangladeshi Red Crescent reported the first death, after a volunteer drowned while moving villagers to shelter when strong winds capsized a boat.

Authorities have scrambled to evacuate low-lying areas in the storm’s projected trail of destruction, but their task is complicated by the need to follow precautions to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Amphan is only the second “super cyclone” to form over the Bay of Bengal since records began, and the first since 1999.

At 3:00 pm (0930 GMT) the centre of the awesome vortex visible from space roared 65 kilometres (40 miles) offshore.

The weather department said that it had begun to make landfall, a process forecast to last four hours.

Gusts on land of 185 kilometres per hour (115 mph) were predicted, the equivalent of a Category Three hurricane, with a storm surge of several metres, forecasters said.

Such walls of water can cascade several kilometres inland, and are often the main killers in any cyclone, typhoon or hurricane.

The Indian met office warned of possible flying objects, “extensive” damage to communications and power lines, and trees being ripped out of the ground.

Kolkata was battered by heavy rain and the muddy Hooghly river was rising under dark skies, while in the coastal resort of Digha, large waves were pounding the shore.

Bangladesh’s low-lying coast, home to 30 million people, and India’s east are regularly battered by cyclones that have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in recent decades.

The 1999 super cyclone left nearly 10,000 dead in Odisha, eight years after a typhoon, tornadoes and flooding killed 139,000 in Bangladesh. In 1970, half a million perished in Cyclone Bhola.

Although outside Amphan’s predicted path, there are fears for the almost one million Rohingya refugees in southeastern Bangladesh—most living in flimsy, makeshift shacks.

There were also concerns for hundreds of Rohingya thought to be out at sea in rickety boats that have been denied entry by Thailand and Malaysia in recent weeks because of coronavirus restrictions.