India and Bangladesh began a massive clean-up on Thursday after the fiercest cyclone since 1999 killed at least 88 people, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.
Cyclone Amphan flattened houses, uprooted trees, blew off roofs and toppled electricity pylons, while a storm surge inundated coastal villages and wrecked shrimp farms vital to the local economy.
The UN office in Bangladesh said about 10 million people were affected, and some 500,000 people may have lost their homes.
But the death toll was far lower than the many thousands killed in previous cyclones – a result of improved weather forecasting and better response plans.
However, the disaster has raised fears that overcrowding in storm shelters will exacerbate the spread of Covid-19.
India’s West Bengal reported 72 deaths – including 14 in the capital Kolkata – with state premier Mamata Banerjee saying: “I haven’t seen a disaster of this magnitude.”
In Bangladesh, the official death toll was 12.
Improved weather forecasting meant Bangladesh was able to move some 2.4 million people into shelters or out of the storm’s direct path, while India evacuated some 650,000.
At least 10 million people were still without power on Thursday afternoon in the worst-hit districts of Bangladesh, said Moin Uddin, the head of the rural electricity board.
“A huge number of electricity poles fell after they were lashed by the cyclone, or they were hit by a huge number of fallen trees. Transformers, conductors and meters were also destroyed,” he said.
Residents of Kolkata woke to flooded streets, with the city’s signature yellow taxis up to their bonnets in water in one neighbourhood.
“The impact of Amphan is worse than coronavirus. Thousands of mud huts have been levelled, trees uprooted, roads washed away and crops destroyed,” Banerjee said.
Other officials said they were waiting for damage reports from the Sundarbans, the vast mangrove area that is home to endangered Bengal tigers and which bore the brunt of the storm.
“We are particularly concerned over the wild animals. They can be washed away during a storm surge in high tide,” forest chief Moyeen Uddin Khan said.
The cyclone weakened as it moved north through Bangladesh, but still unleashed heavy rains and fierce winds in Cox’s Bazar, the district which houses about one million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar.
The UN said that the effect in the vast camps of flimsy shacks appeared to be “fairly minimal”.
The area most affected by Amphan, the first “super cyclone” to form over the Bay of Bengal since 1999, was the Satkhira district of south-west Bangladesh.
There a storm surge – a wall of ocean water that is often one of the main killers in major weather systems – roared inland and destroyed embankments protecting villages and shrimp farms.
In the village of Purba Durgabati, hundreds of locals worked through the night to mend a breach in a levee, but to no avail. Some 600 homes and thousands of shrimp farms were hit.
“My home has gone underwater. My shrimp farm is gone. I don’t know how I am going to survive,” Omar Faruq, 28, said.
“The coronavirus has already taken a toll on people. Now the cyclone has made them paupers,” said local councillor Bhabotosh Kumar Mondal.
The last super cyclone in 1999 left nearly 10,000 dead in India’s Odisha state, eight years after a typhoon, tornadoes and flooding killed 139,000 in Bangladesh.
This time, as during a cyclone in Odisha last year, the human cost was greatly lessened thanks to the evacuations, said Enamur Rahman, Bangladesh’s junior minister for disaster management.
“Only several people died. The majority of them ventured out to collect fallen mangoes during the storm,” Rahman said.
Natural disaster expert Nayeem Wahra, at the Disaster Forum think-tank, said the storm also lost some of its potency over the Bay of Bengal before it made landfall.
“The storm surge was not powerful or high enough to cause extensive damage to lives or properties,” Wahra said.
But packing people into shelters raised the risk of Covid-19 spreading, with cases still surging in both India and Bangladesh.
Authorities said they extended shelters to reduce crowding, while also insisting everyone wore face masks.
However, many chose to stay at home and face the storm rather than risk being infected.
“We fear the cyclone, but we also fear the coronavirus,” said Sulata Munda, a villager in Bangladesh who refused to go to a shelter.
The storm made landfall in Bhutan at around 7pm local time on Wednesday but no major damage has been reported.
The National Centre for Hydrology and Meteorology (NCHM) said moderate rainfall is likely over northern, western and central parts of the country on Thursday and Friday.
Moderate to heavy rainfall are expected across the southern and eastern parts of Bhutan, it said. Thunderstorms and gusty winds are likely over isolated parts of the country during the period.
The heads of the country’s districts said residents have been informed of the risks through the local government officials and that emergency respond teams including desuups (Guardians of the Peace), medical teams, police and local leaders were all on standby.
For two days, the district disaster response teams spearheaded by their administrative heads will study the situation and act accordingly.
In case of emergencies in the coming days, schools have also been identified as evacuation centres in each gewog (equivalent to commune in Cambodia).
AFP, KUENSEL (BHUTAN)/ASIA NEWS NETWORK