Bangladesh has shifted over two million people to storm shelters and deployed the military to deal with the powerful cyclone ‘Amphan’ which is set to make a landfall on the costal districts, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said on Wednesday.
Authorities have already raised the alert level to ‘great danger’ for some districts in the country as the cyclone, the most powerful storm since cyclone ‘Sidr’ killed nearly 3,500 people in 2007, was approaching the coastline.
“We have the preparations (to face cyclone Amphan). We are taking all possible measures that we should adopt for protecting the lives and properties of the people from the cyclone,” Prime Minister Hasina told a meeting of the National Disaster Management Council (NDMC) formed to review the preparations in facing the possible assault of the super cyclone.
“Twenty lakh people have so far been evacuated to the cyclone centres as part of the prior preparation,” Hasina was quoted as saying by The Daily Star newspaper.
The Bangladesh Army, Navy and Air Force have made preparations to tackle the super cyclone, Bdnews24.Com reported.
A Bangladesh Red Crescent Society (BDRC) volunteer drowned on Wednesday when a boat capsized while evacuating villagers to safety in southwestern Patuakhali, becoming the first victim of Amphan. “He was on a boat along with four others when a sudden storm under advancing Amphan’s influence overturned it. Three others managed to escape,” BDRC’s cyclone preparedness programme Nurul Islam Khan told PTI.