Cyclone Fani Hits Bangladesh

The strongest cyclone Fani hits Bangladesh on Saturday. Although the storm lost some of its power after hitting India, a storm surge still breached embankments to submerge dozens of villages on Bangladesh’s low-lying coast, a disaster ministry official in Dhaka said.
About 1.2 million people living in the most vulnerable districts in Bangladesh had been moved to 4,000 shelters. According to local sources, At least nine people, including two children, were killed across Bangladesh as cyclone Fani approached and hit the country. The deaths were reported from Barguna, Noakhali, Bhola, Bagerhat, Patuakhali, Lakshmipur and Chapainawabganj districts.
In Barguna, a woman and her grandchild were killed when their house was torn apart by the stormy wind in Charduani village of Patharghata Upazila around 2:30 am on Saturday. In Noakhali, a two-year-old boy, Ismail, son of Abdur Rahman, was killed in a tree collapse at Char Aminul Haque village in Subarnachar upazila around 10:30 pm, Iqbal Hasan, a project implementation officer (PIO). Around 50 people were injured and hundreds of houses damaged at Char Wapda and Char Jabbar unions during the storm. The injured were taken to Subarnachar Upazila Health Complex.
The strongest cyclone to hit India in five years killed at least 12 people in the eastern state of Odisha, before swinging north-eastwards into Bangladesh. In India, authorities were assessing the casualties and damage caused by Fani, which had spent days building power over the northern reaches of the Bay of Bengal before tearing into Odisha. Indian media reported that at least 12 people died across the state, most as a result of falling trees. A mass evacuation of more than a million people in the 24 hours before the tropical cyclone made landfall is likely to have averted a greater loss of life.
>Alma Siddiqua