Thousands of people were freshly marooned by floods in the northern and north-eastern regions as the country’s major rivers, including the Brahmaputra, Jamuna, Meghna and Padma, continued to swell, flowing above the danger level at many places.
At least six people died and two went missing on Sunday with more than one lakh evacuated to 984 flood shelters, mainly in Sylhet and Sunamganj districts, where the entire 60 lakh population is reported to have been affected by floods.
The deceased were identified as Abdus Salam, 58, and Abdul Hakim, 60, of Lalmonirhat, Omiron Bewa, 55, of Rangpur, Almas, 75, of Kurigram, Nirob, a four-month-old boy of Gaibandha, and Titu, 35, of Sylhet, were died being crushed under houses or electrocuted or swept away by floodwaters.
All but Nirob died on Sunday and Nirob on Saturday.
The ill-fated baby was swept away by the Teesta after he slipped from his mother’s lap on their way to a flood shelter in Sundarganj of Gaibandha.
The Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre warned that floods would spread to the country’s central region today, including Tangail, Munshiganj and Shariatpur, amid fears that the simultaneous swelling of the Brahmaputra and the Padma could prolong the flooding.
While the flood situation in Sylhet and Sunamganj remained unchanged, with hundreds of thousands of people stranded by the flooding cut-off from all communications since Thursday, rapidly swelling rivers in the north washed away at least 78 houses, caused three flood protection embankments to collapse and threatened the existence of many others.
‘Water is gushing into Moulvibazar from all directions,’ Mir Nahid Ahsan, deputy commissioner, Moulvibazar, told New Age, adding that a massive onrush of water from the upstream continued but rivers, flowing far above their danger levels, are unable to drain it.
Over the past two days, more than 2.5 lakh people have been left marooned in Moulvibazar and 15,000 people left home for flood shelters, according to the office of the deputy commissioner.
‘The water level in the Manu River is rising by three to four centimetres every hour,’ said Nahid.
The northern and north-eastern regions are home to 40 officially recognised trans-boundary rivers entering from India, which drain a vast mountainous terrain of Assam, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Manipur and Mizoram, where extreme rain witnessed intermittently over the past two weeks.
In the 24-hour reporting period until 9:00am Bangladesh time on Sunday, the India Meteorological Department reported that Mizoram reported 299 per cent of above-normal rain, followed by Assam with 284 per cent, Sikkim with 222 per cent, Manipur with 166 per cent, Arunachal Pradesh with 114 per cent, Tripura with 109 per cent, Meghalaya 86 per cent, Bihar with 54 per cent and West Bengal with 48 per cent.
The trans-boundary rivers are tributaries of the Brahmaputra, Padma, Jamuna and Meghna. The IMD predicted heavy to very heavy rain over the catchment areas of all these rivers over the next five days.
Eight major rivers are flowing above the danger mark at 18 points in nine districts, the FFWC daily flood bulletin said on Sunday.
The rivers overflowing the danger limit are the Brahmaputra, Dudhkumar, Teesta, Dharla, Ghaghat, Jamuna, Someshwari, Surma and Kushiyara.
Of the 21 stations that measure the water levels in the Brahmaputra and Jamuna, seven reported swelling.
The highest rise of 88 cm in the 24 hours was recorded in Kushiyara, which flowed 160 cm above the danger mark, the FFWC data showed.
The FFWC predicted that the overall flood situation would worsen.
The prediction that floods may worsen and continue for a while has frightened people as they cannot rely on the government to support them with food and drinking water.
There were many areas in Sunamganj where relief supplies reached affected people for the first time on Sunday, which had to be airlifted. Supplies of relief, mainly dry foods, were dropped on rooftops from helicopters.
‘We are struggling to feed 6,000 people who have taken shelter at the deputy commissioner’s office and its adjacent buildings,’ said Muhammad Ruhul Amin, district relief and rehabilitation officer, who was helping with the emergency government response in Sunamganj.
The difficult part of feeding such a huge number of people is to find dry places for cooking food. Sylhet and Sunamganj are left with little dry land.
While Sunamganj, home to over 15 lakh people, continued to remain without power since Thursday, the supply of electricity was restored to parts of Sylhet city on Monday. Hundreds of thousands of people are without electricity in Sylhet. Power supply was restored to hospitals in the city. Upazila health complexes however remain plunged in darkness.
‘We cannot do better than this unless water recedes,’ said Mohammad Abdul Quadir, chief, Power Development Board, Sylhet division.
Hundreds of people are living on boats in Sunamganj as they could neither stay in their submerged houses nor find a shelter to take refuge. There is no way of knowing how others who could not make it to the limited number of shelters offered by the government as their phones ran out of charge by Staurday.
The conditions in which farm animals are surviving are left to imagination as authorities gave no official account in this regard.
The railway communication from and to Sylhet was restored on Sunday, reported UNB, after floodwater receded from the railway station.
A severe food and drinking water crisis was reported also from northern parts, where 71,000 people have left home for shelter on higher ground but only 20 flood shelters have been opened in the affected north so far.
News agency UNB reported that the Chandpur town protection embankment became vulnerable due to onrush of water from the upstream.
The UNB reported floods also in Kurigram, Gaibandha, Rangpur, Lalmonirhat, Nilphamari, Bogura, Jamalpur, Sirajganj districts in the Brahmaputra basin.
State Minister for Disaster Management and Relief Enamur Rahman on Sunday said that 64 upazilas of 12 districts were affected by floods.
The minister said that Army, Navy, Coast Guard and Fire Service personnel were conducting rescue operations using at least 48 boats.
Beside extreme rain upstream across the border, such rain continued inside Bangladesh as well, with the FFWC recording 317 mm downpour at Jaflong, Sylhet, in the 24-hour reporting period, followed by Sylhet with 315 mm, and Lalakhal, Sylhet, with 311 mm.
Meanwhile, some parts of port city Chattogram have been flooded due to heavy rainfalls and tidal water on Sunday.
Mohammad Ali, executive engineer of WDB Chattogram-1, told that Agrabad CDA residential area, Bahaddarhat, Chandgoan, Chawkbazar, Bakalia, Halishahar and some other areas went under water due to heavy rain and tidal water.
'The water stagnation may continue for 3-4 hours. The water level should go down soon. But if the rain continues, the areas may remain or be flooded again,' he said.
However, the WDB Chattogram office at Bahaddarhat experienced knee-deep water on its ground floor, the officer said.
Kazi Hasan Bin Shams, chief engineer of the Chattogram Development Authority, said that there was water stagnation as the water flow slowed down in low-lying areas, including Bahaddarhat, Bakalia. Most of the drains and canals were filled with sewage, slowing down the water flow.
'We are implementing a megaproject to get rid of water stagnation in Chattogram. The project is ongoing and only half of the project work is completed due to insufficient funds,' he said.
The Bangladesh Meteorological Department predicted widespread rain all over the country until 6:00pm today.
In a development, leaders of the Ganosamhati Andolan on Sunday expressed concern over the flood situation in some parts of the country and demanded the highest state-level initiatives to save the flood-affected people.
Chief coordinator Zonayed Saki and executive coordinator Abul Hassan Rubel of the organisation in a joint statement said that the government should involve all the political parties and social organisations in the relief operations in the flood-hit areas.
