Dhaka, Bangladesh – Ekramul Haque was shocked when his uncle known as him late within the night of August 21 to tell him that floodwaters had inundated his ancestral dwelling in Feni district in southeastern Bangladesh, close to the border with India.
On the time, Haque was about 10 kilometres away within the city of Mirsarai in Chattogram district, the place he lives together with his spouse and youngsters.
The following day, it took him 40 minutes to journey by minibus in a deluge to achieve his village.
“I rushed again dwelling the subsequent morning in torrential rain. By the point I reached dwelling, the water was as much as my knees and had soaked every part,” the 29-year-old mentioned. “I urged my household to accompany me to Mirsarai.”
His dad and mom and an uncle returned to Mirsarai with him.
However as heavy rains continued and studies emerged of floods submerging single-storey homes in his village in Chhagalnaiya Upazila (an upazila is a sub-unit of a district), Haque determined to undertake rescue missions from Friday morning to assist different members of the family and village residents who had been stranded.
“I obtained in contact with some buddies from school and fashioned a group to assist. Nonetheless, I used to be shocked to seek out that the highway from Mirsarai to Chagalnaiya was utterly submerged underneath chest-deep water, making it utterly impassable on Friday,” he mentioned.
Supply of reduction provides
Haque and his buddies initially tried to construct a makeshift raft from felled banana bushes, but it surely didn’t float because of the currents.
They ultimately managed to hire a small boat for thrice the standard price. “The present was very robust and it took the boatman three hours to information us. After we arrived, virtually all the homes had been utterly underneath water,” Haque advised Al Jazeera.
The area the place Haque grew up doesn’t at all times expertise annual monsoon flooding, in contrast to lower-lying areas of the nation.
“I don’t keep in mind ever seeing ankle-deep water in my space throughout monsoon. My dad and mom talked about that in the course of the nice flood of 1988, the water got here as much as knees. This case was one thing I had by no means skilled,” he added, talking on the telephone as he dropped off assist in Chhagalnaiya.
Floods in central, jap and southeastern Bangladesh have killed 23 folks and affected greater than 5.7 million. Round 1.24 million households in 11 districts of the nation of 180 million persons are stranded, reduce off from the remainder of the nation by flooding attributable to incessant monsoon rains and overflowing rivers.
As floodwaters steadily recede, these affected are in pressing want of meals, consuming water, drugs and dry clothes. The state of affairs is especially crucial in distant areas reminiscent of Haque village, which isn’t near the district capital and the place blocked roads have severely hampered rescue and reduction efforts.
“We’ve been working tirelessly to convey pressing assist to those that have been stranded over the previous few days,” Haque mentioned on Tuesday. “Yesterday we reached a village the place folks had been with out meals for 72 hours. Many had been severely unwell with diarrhoea and lacked clear water. It was an unprecedented disaster.”
Anti-Indian sentiment
Located on the world’s largest Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, Bangladesh has a deep connection to water. Its panorama, characterised by rivers and floodplains, is accustomed to annual monsoon floods, notably within the low-lying districts of the northeast. Residents in these areas are acquainted with this cycle and put together by taking valuables to kinfolk in areas that aren’t vulnerable to flooding and by stocking up on meals and water forward of the heavy rains and flooding that happen every monsoon season.
Bangladesh is likely one of the most climate-vulnerable international locations on this planet, with round 3.5 million folks susceptible to river flooding yearly, in keeping with a 2015 World Financial institution Institute evaluation.
However this yr’s flooding took many within the southeast without warning.
In flood-affected districts reminiscent of Feni, Cumilla and Lakshmipur (areas near the Indian border), many blame India, which they are saying launched water from the Dumbur dam in Tripura state in the course of final week. India has denied opening the floodgates.
The dam, a low construction about 30 metres excessive, is positioned greater than 120 kilometres from the border with Bangladesh. It produces electrical energy for the Bangladeshi energy grid and is constructed on the Gumti River, which joins the Meghna in Bangladesh.
Tripura can also be going through extreme flooding, which has left 31 folks lifeless and greater than 100,000 residents displaced to refugee camps. Floods and landslides have affected practically 1.7 million folks in India.
Kamrul Hasan Nomani, 41, a resident of Lakshmipur, advised Al Jazeera that floodwaters are knee-deep in his home and have broken a lot of it.
He believes no quantity of rain might have induced the water to achieve chest-deep in his village with out the dam opening.
For Nomani, like many affected by the floods, the disaster has generated anti-Indian sentiment and lots of imagine that India intentionally opened the dam with out warning. “They did it deliberately as a result of their most popular authorities, led by [former Prime Minister Sheikh] “Hasina has fallen in Bangladesh,” Nomani mentioned.
On August 5, following huge scholar protests, Hasina’s 15-year rule got here to an abrupt finish. Hasina, who was broadly thought to be New Delhi’s favorite chief in Bangladesh, sought refuge in India. The anti-Indian sentiment that existed whereas Hasina was prime minister, fuelled by accusations of Indian interference to maintain her in energy, has intensified since she fled to India.
India cited extreme rainfall as the reason for the flooding, though it acknowledged {that a} flood-related energy outage and communications failure on August 21 prevented it from sending common river updates to its downstream neighbors in Bangladesh.
Shafiqul Alam, press secretary to Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who leads Bangladesh’s new interim authorities, advised reporters in Dhaka that Pranay Verma, India’s excessive commissioner to Bangladesh, knowledgeable the interim authorities that water from the dam was “routinely launched” due to excessive ranges.
Sarder Uday Raihan, govt engineer on the Bangladesh Flood Prediction and Warning Centre, advised Al Jazeera that the company often receives details about rising water ranges in India’s rivers twice a day.
“Nonetheless, this time, India didn’t share any updates. With out correct info, it’s tough to provide an correct forecast of floods,” he mentioned, including that well timed warnings might have helped forestall deaths and injury.
Homes and crops destroyed
Mohamad Khalequzzaman, a geology professor at Lock Haven College within the US, advised Al Jazeera that the final flood to inundate districts reminiscent of Feni, Cumilla and Lakshmipur was in 1988.
“The principle explanation for this yr’s flooding seems to be the weird rainfall within the area, however a number of different elements have aggravated the state of affairs,” he mentioned.
It mentioned rainfall from August 20 to Friday ranged from 200 to 493 mm (8 to 19.4 inches), in contrast with the standard 120 to 360 mm (4.7 to 14.2 inches) in a number of localities in Tripura and jap Bangladesh, which it described as unusually “heavy” for that area in the course of the monsoon.
Khalequzzaman added that whereas the sudden launch of water from the dam throughout an already extreme flood interval might have contributed to flooding within the Gomati river basin, it’s unlikely to have contributed considerably to flooding in Feni city, Sonagazi and Chhagalnaiya Upazilas as a result of they don’t fall within the river’s catchment space.
He additionally defined that for the reason that soil within the watershed space is already saturated, many of the rainwater turns into floor runoff, which causes flooding of close by rivers within the affected districts.
He additionally famous that unplanned urbanisation over time has led to a build-up of silt which, together with roads, buildings and embankments, notably alongside the Gomati and Muhuri rivers, is stopping flood waters from receding.
As well as, he mentioned, land encroachment by unlawful firms utilizing the Gomati and Feni rivers for transportation, for instance, has destroyed a lot of the pure drainage system in these areas.
“The mixture of torrential rains, disruptions in river circulation in each India and Bangladesh, lack of pure drainage, river mattress sedimentation and impediments to floor circulation have contributed to the extreme flooding,” he mentioned.
In a village in Cumilla that’s nonetheless flooded, the home of Abdul Matin, a trainer, has been destroyed.
“I’ve misplaced every part. My corrugated iron home was washed away. I don’t know the way I’ll address the financial devastation attributable to the flood,” Matin mentioned.
He doesn’t imagine the flooding was induced solely by heavy rains and injury to the pure drainage system. “I maintain India liable for this,” he mentioned. “This was India’s water.”
Ismail Mridha, a 46-year-old farmer from Sonagazi Upazila in Feni, advised Al Jazeera that the flood devastated each his home and his farmland. “My home, made from mud and corrugated iron, has been utterly destroyed, and the farmland the place I grew eggplants and pumpkins has been washed away,” he mentioned.
“I survived the flood, however I’m undecided how I’ll get well from the monetary devastation.”
