Cyclone Mahasen weakens after raking Bangladesh

May 17, 2013:--



Cyclone Mahasen weakened significantly as it passed over Bangladesh Thursday, missing major population centres, meteorological officials said.



The storm hit the coast of the South Asian nation late Thursday morning, but caused far less damage than had been feared.



Still, when the outer bands of the storm struck the southern coast, remote fishing villages were lashed with heavy rain and fierce winds that flattened mud and straw huts and forced the evacuation of more than one million people.



Read about the birth of tropical storms and how they are forecast

Meteorological official Mohammad Shah Alam said Mahasen had weakened to a tropical storm before it made landfall. The storm also appeared to have spared Burma and northeast India.



The storm had been on course for Bangladesh, Burma, also known as Myanmar, and northeast India, bringing life-threatening conditions to an area with a total population of 8.2 million, according to the UN\'s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.



Danger was particularly high for tens of thousands of displaced Rohingya people living in plastic-roofed tents and huts made of reeds in dozens of refugee camps along Burma\'s western coast.



Driven from their homes by violence, members of the Muslim minority group refused to evacuate, distrusting an order from officials in a majority-Buddhist country where Rohingya have faced decades of discrimination.



Early Thursday, the cyclone battered the southern Bangladesh fishing village of Khepurpara along the Bay of Bengal with 100 km/h winds and was heading east toward the city of Chittagong and the seafront resort town of Cox\'s Bazar. River ferries and boat service were suspended, and scores of factories near the choppy Bay of Bengal were closed. The military said it was keeping 22 navy ships and 19 Air Force helicopters at the ready.



Some Rohingya were taking down their tents and hauling their belongings away, though most appeared to be staying. (Gemunu Amarasinghe/Associated Press)

Tens of thousands of people fled their shanty homes along the coast and packed into cyclone shelters, schools, government office buildings and some of the 300 hotels in Cox\'s Bazar to wait out the storm. Some brought their livestock, which took shelter outside.



\"We have seen such a disaster before,\" said Mohammad Abu Taleb, who shut down his convenience shop in the city of 200,000. \"It\'s better to stay home. I\'m not taking any chance.\"



A 1991 cyclone that slammed into Bangladesh from the Bay of Bengal killed an estimated 139,000 people and left millions homeless. In 2008, Burma\'s southern delta was devastated Cyclone Nargis, which swept away entire farming villages and killed more than 130,000 people.



The Bangladesh Ministry of Disaster Management said more than one million people had been evacuated from coastal areas. Television stations reported the deaths of two men, one of whom was crushed by a tree uprooted by the wind.



India\'s Meteorological Department forecast damage to the northeastern states of Assam, Mizoram, Manipur, Tripura and Nagaland, and advised fishermen off the west coast of the country to be cautious for the next 36 hours.



Related heavy rains and flooding in Sri Lanka were blamed for eight deaths earlier this week. At least eight people — and possibly many more — were killed in Myanmar as they fled the cyclone Monday night, when overcrowded boats carrying more than 100 Rohingya capsized. Only 43 people had been rescued by Thursday, and more than 50 Rohingya were still missing.



140,000 in camps

Much attention was focused on western Burma, because of fears over the fate of the crowded, low-lying Rohingya camps.



In Rakhine state, around 140,000 people — mostly Rohingya — have been living in the camps since last year, when two outbreaks of sectarian violence between the Muslim minority and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists forced many Rohingya from their homes.



Nearly half the displaced live in coastal areas considered highly vulnerable to storm surges and flooding from Cyclone Mahasen.



\"Pack and leave,\" a Rakhine state official, U Hla Maung, warned as he walked through a camp near Sittwe, the state capital. Accompanied by more than a dozen soldiers and riot police, he suggested that people living there move to a nearby railroad embankment, then left without offering help.



Distrust of authorities led many Rohingya to stay where they were Thursday morning.



\"We have no safe place to move, so we\'re staying here, whether the storm comes or not,\" said Ko Hla Maung, an unemployed fisherman. \" … The soldiers want to take us to a village closer to the sea, and we\'re not going to do that. … If the storm is coming, then that village will be destroyed.\"
News From: http://www.7StarNews.com