Dhaka, Bangladesh – Ekramul Haque was stunned when his uncle called him late in the afternoon of August 21 to notify him that floodwaters had swamped their ancestral home in southeastern Bangladesh’s Feni district, close to the Indian border.
At the time, Haque was about 10km (6 miles) away in the town of Mirsarai in the Chattogram district, where he lives with his otherhalf and kids.
The next day, it took 40 minutes takingatrip by minibus in the rainstorm to reach his town.
“I hurried back to my home the next earlymorning inthemiddleof torrential rain. By the time I gothere, knee-deep water had currently wentinto and soaked whatever,” the 29-year-old stated. “I advised my extended household to come with me to Mirsarai.”
His momsanddads and one uncle returned to Mirsarai with him.
But as the heavy rain continued and reports emerged of floodwaters immersing single-storey homes in his town in Chhagalnaiya Upazila (an upazila is a district subunit), Haque chose to carryout rescue objectives beginning on Friday earlymorning to assistance other household members and homeowners of the town who were stranded.
“I gottenintouchwith a coupleof buddies from university and formed a group to aid. However, I was stunned to find that the roadway from Mirsarai to Chagalnaiya was totally immersed under chest-high water, making it totally blockaded on Friday,” he stated.
Delivering relief products
Haque and his pals atfirst attempted to construct a makeshift raft from dropped banana trees, however it stoppedworking to float due to the currents.
They ultimately handled to hire a little boat at 3 times the normal expense. “The existing was really strong, and it took the boatman 3 hours to navigate us through. When we gothere, almost all the homes were totally undersea,” Haque informed Al Jazeera.
The area where Haque grew up doesn’t constantly experience yearly monsoon floods, unlike lower lying parts of the nation.
“I wear’t recall ever seeing floodwaters increase beyond ankle-deep in my location before in monsoon. My momsanddads pointedout that throughout the significant flood of 1988, the water reached knee-deep. This circumstance was beyond anything I’ve ever experienced,” he included, speaking by phone while dropping off help in Chhagalnaiya.
Floods in main, eastern and southeastern Bangladesh haveactually eliminated 23 individuals and impacted more than 5.7 million. About 1.24 million households throughout 11 districts in the nation of 180 million individuals are stranded, cut off from the rest of the nation by floodwaters due to ruthless monsoon rains and overruning rivers.
As the floodwaters slowly decline, those impacted are urgently in requirement of food, tidy water, medications and dry clothes. The circumstance is particularly crucial in remote locations like Haque’s town, which is not close to the district town and where obstructed roadways have badly restrained rescue and relief efforts.
“We haveactually been working relentlessly to provide immediate relief to those stranded for the past coupleof days,” Haque stated on Tuesday. “Yesterday, we reached a town where individuals hadactually been without food for 72 hours. Many were seriously ill with diarrhoea and didnothave tidy drinking water. It was an extraordinary crisis.”
Anti-Indian belief
Bangladesh, situated on the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta, which is the world’s biggest, has a deep connection with water. Its landscape, characterised by rivers and floodplains, is accustomed to yearly monsoon floods, especially in the low-lying northeastern districts. Residents in these locations are familiar with this cycle and prepare by taking their prizedpossessions to familymembers in locations that are not flood-prone and equipping up on food and water before the heavy rains and flooding that happen each monsoon season.
Bangladesh is one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, and about 3.5 million individuals are at danger of yearly river flooding, according to a 2015 World Bank Institute analysis.
But this year’s floods captured numerous in the southeast off guard.
In flood-affected districts such as Feni, Cumilla and Lakshmipur – areas close to the Indian border – numerous are blaming India, which they stated launched water from the Dumbur Dam in the state of Tripura in the middle of last week. India has rejected opening the sluice gates.
The dam, a low structure about 30 metres (100ft) high, is more than 120km (75 miles) from the Bangladeshi border. It produces electricalpower that contributes to the grid utilized by Bangladesh and is developed on the Gumti River, which combines with the Meghna in Bangladesh.
Tripura is likewise dealingwith serious flooding with 31 individuals reported dead and more than 100,000 homeowners displaced into relief camps. Floods and landslides haveactually impacted almost 1.7 million individuals in India.
Kamrul Hasan Nomani, 41, a citizen of Lakshmipur, informed Al Jazeera that the floodwater is knee-deep in his home and hasactually harmed a big part of it.
He thinks that no quantity of rain might have triggered