Cyclone Remal made landfall late Sunday night, bringing strong gusts and heavy rain to coastal areas in India and Bangladesh. Around midnight, the storm moved across Bangladesh's Mongla port and the neighboring Sagar Islands in West Bengal, India, with winds gusting to 135 kilometers per hour. Strong winds, rain, and flooding are forecast to continue throughout Monday as the storm travels inland and fades. Cyclone Remal smashes through Bengal, wreaking havoc and causing massive devastation. Indeed, one person died as a result of this natural disaster on Monday. Authorities have not officially released casualty estimates, but Dhaka-based Somoy TV reports that at least two people have died in Bangladesh.
In recent years, violent storms have frequently hit the low-lying coastal districts in the Bay of Bengal. Remal is the first storm to strike the region this year. On the other hand, millions of people lost power when the hurricane hit land. Bangladeshi authorities stated that they had switched off electricity in numerous regions ahead of time to avoid accidents. Some communities also lost power due to downed electricity poles and damaged lines.
According to TV stations, scores of coastal villages in Bangladesh were inundated as a result of the storm washing away or damaging many flood prevention barriers.Power Minister Arup Biswas of West Bengal, India, reported that the energy infrastructure had been severely damaged. He said that within the first hour of the storm, at least 356 electricity poles were uprooted and numerous transformers were damaged. Bangladesh evacuated over 800,000 people from the ports of Mongla and Chittagong, as well as nine coastal districts, to storm shelters as a preventative measure. In India, an additional 110,000 people were brought into shelters. Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital city, set up roughly 8,000 cyclone shelters and enlisted 78,000 volunteers in anticipation of the storm. The Indian Navy had ships, aircraft, divers, and medical supplies on standby.
The Sundarbans delta, the world's biggest mangrove forest shared by India and Bangladesh, suffered the most damage to its riverbanks. High tides breached defensive embankments in numerous locations. More than 450,000 people have died as a result of 12 severe cyclones that have struck Bangladesh's coastline since 1965. While the numbers are comparably low, as Bengal begins the difficult job of rehabilitation, the spirit of its people shows through, stronger than any storm. This is India.com, and we're here to bring you the latest on Cyclone Remal's damage and ongoing recovery operations.
