Winds and first heavy rains pound fragile landscape sheltering some 700,000 refugees, triggering landslides that killed one refugee and injured others amid ongoing emergency response.
After days of heavy rains and winds, mother-of-four Hasina Begum was feeding her children in the family’s bamboo and tarpaulin shelter, with her youngest, 10 day-old baby, Anwar Siddiq asleep in a cot, when she heard a loud noise. Large parts of the hillside collapsed in an instant, battering the shelter and breaking bamboo support beams.
“If this had happened at night, we might not have made it out alive,” she adds, nursing sleeping baby Anwar in her arms.
Driving rain has caused at least 89 reported incidents, including 37 landslides that killed one refugee and injured others. Nearly 2,500 refugee families – a total of more than 11,000 people – have so far been affected. The area of the site were Hasina and her family are living was particularly badly-hit, with 17 families in her block having to move because of landslides.
For months, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and its partners, have worked around the clock in support of the Government of Bangladesh, to mitigate the risks. Teams have put in new bridges, built drainage canals, strengthened footpaths and provided over 83,000 families with upgraded shelter kits so they can better protect themselves.
But it is also one of the most risky due to its hilly topography and low-lying areas, making people here highly vulnerable to both landslides and flooding. In the remains of Md. Rafiq’s home, large beams have collapsed and are leaning sideways; and the bamboo and tarpaulin sides of the shelter have caved in.
“We can’t move back here,” he says. “We need to move to another place – a safe place. I’m afraid this might happen to us again, I’m afraid that the hill will fall onto us.”
This is just the start of the monsoon season, which peaks through the start of September. A few days of very heavy rain have already had a punishing impact on the fragile environment in the refugee settlements in Cox’s Bazar district where more than 720,000 Rohingya refugees who fled violence in Myanmar since last August, are sheltering.
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