Bangladesh and Myanmar on Saturday advised thousands of its citizens to vacate areas that are expected to be hit by the most powerful cyclone in nearly two decades.
Cyclone Mocha was packing winds of up to 175 kms per hour (109 miles per hour) and meteorological officials in Dhaka classed it as “very severe”, reported AFP.
The cyclone is expected to make landfall on Sunday morning between Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, and Sittwe on Myanmar’s western Rakhine coast.
Azizur Rahman, the head of Bangladesh’s Meteorological Department, told AFP, “Cyclone Mocha is the most powerful storm since Cyclone Sidr.”
Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh’s southern coast in November 2007, killing more than 3,000 people and causing billions of dollars in damage.
Bangladeshi authorities have banned the Rohingya from constructing permanent concrete homes, fearing it may incentivise them to settle permanently rather than return to Myanmar, which they fled five years ago.
“We live in houses made of tarpaulin and bamboo,” said refugee Enam Ahmed, according to AFP, who lives at the Nayapara camp near the border town of Teknaf.
“We are scared. We don’t know where we will be sheltered. We are in a panic.”
The storm is also predicted to unleash a storm surge up to four metres (13 feet) high, which can inundate low-lying coastal and riverine villages.
Officials said thousands of volunteers were evacuating Rohingyas from “risky areas” to more solid structures such as schools.
But Bangladesh’s deputy refugee commissioner Shamsud Douza told AFP: “All the Rohingyas in the camps are in risk.”
Panic has also gripped some 8,000 people in Bangladesh’s southernmost island of Saint Martin’s with the tiny coral outcrop — one of the country’s top resort districts — right in the storm’s path.
Officials said around 1,000 Saint Martin’s islanders have done the same, moving 250 boats to Teknaf to try to prevent them being washed away.
Operations were suspended at the country’s largest seaport, Chittagong, with boat transport and fishing activities also halted.
With inputs from agencies
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