SATKHIRA, Bangladesh, May 27 (Reuters) – Strong gales and heavy rain brought by cyclone Remal lashed the coastlines of India and Bangladesh on Monday, killing at least four people and cutting electricity supply to millions before losing intensity.
The year’s first cyclone in the region is the latest of the frequent storms that have pounded the low-lying coasts of the South Asian neighbours in recent years, as climate change drives up surface temperatures at sea.
Fierce winds snapped power lines, uprooted poles and trees and snatched the roofs off some tin and thatched houses while the rain and high tides damaged some embankments and flooded coastal areas.
“We have had no electricity since night, my mobile battery will run out anytime,” said Rahat Raja, a resident of Bangladesh’s coastal district of Satkhira. “By Allah’s grace, the cyclone was not as violent as we thought.”
Nearly 3 million people in Bangladesh were without electricity, officials of its power ministry said.
Both nations moved nearly a million people to storm shelters, about 800,000 of them in Bangladesh, and roughly 110,000 in India, authorities said.
Two people were killed in Bangladesh as they headed to cyclone shelters at the 11th hour, said disaster management chief Mijanur Rahman.
“People are usually very reluctant to leave their livestock and homes to go to cyclone shelters,” he said. “They wait until the last minute when it is often too late.”
Authorities will need more time to gauge the full extent of losses, he added.
The storm, packing speeds of up to 135 kph (84 mph), crossed the area around Bangladesh’s southern port of Mongla and the adjoining Sagar Islands in India’s eastern state of West Bengal late on Sunday, Indian weather officials said.
It began making landfall in India at about 9 p.m., a process that ran for about five hours, weather officials added, before weakening into a cyclone during Monday morning.
