‘I’ve lost everything’: Bangladesh floods leave 1.24 million families at risk | Climate Crisis

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Ekramul Haque was stunned when his uncle called him late on the afternoon of August 21 and told him that their family home in Feni district in southeastern Bangladesh, near the border with India, had been inundated by floodwaters.

At the time, Haque was about 10 km away in Mirsarai town in Chattogram district, where he lives with his wife and children.

The next day it took 40 minutes to reach his village by minibus through the downpour.

“I rushed back home the next morning, in the pouring rain. When I arrived, the water was already up to my knees and everything was soaked,” the 29-year-old said. “I urged my extended family to come with me to Mirsarai.”

His parents and an uncle returned with him to Mirsarai.

But as heavy rains continued and reports of floods inundating single-storey houses in his village in Chhagalnaiya Upazila (an upazila is a district), Haque decided to undertake rescue missions from Friday morning to help other family members and stranded residents of the village.

“I contacted a few friends from college and formed a team to help. However, I was shocked to find that the road from Mirsarai to Chagalnaiya was completely flooded up to the chest, making it completely impassable on Friday,” he said.

Delivering relief supplies

Haque and his friends initially tried to build a makeshift raft from cut banana trees, but due to the current this was not possible.

Eventually, they managed to rent a small boat for three times the usual price. “The current was very strong and it took the skipper three hours to guide us through. When we arrived, almost all the houses were completely submerged,” Haque told Al Jazeera.

In the region where Haque grew up, there are no annual monsoon floods, unlike in the lower parts of the country.

“I don’t remember ever seeing a floodwater level higher than ankle-high in my area during monsoon. My parents told me that during the great flood of 1988, the water was knee-high. This situation was beyond anything I have ever experienced,” he added, while delivering relief materials over the phone in Chhagalnaiya.

Floods in central, eastern and southeastern Bangladesh have killed 23 people and affected more than 5.7 million. About 1.24 million families in 11 districts in the country of 180 million people are stranded, cut off from the rest of the country by floods caused by persistent monsoon rains and overflowing rivers.

As the floodwaters gradually recede, those affected are in dire need of food, clean water, medicine and dry clothing. The situation is particularly critical in remote areas such as Haque village, which is not close to the district town and where blocked roads have severely hampered rescue and relief efforts.

“We have been working tirelessly over the past few days to provide urgent aid to those who were stranded,” Haque said Tuesday. “Yesterday we reached a village where people had been without food for 72 hours. Many were seriously ill with diarrhea and had no clean drinking water. It was an unprecedented crisis.”

Anti-Indian sentiment

Bangladesh, located on the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta, the largest in the world, has a deep connection to water. The landscape, characterized by rivers and floodplains, is accustomed to annual monsoon flooding, particularly in the low-lying northeastern districts. Residents in these areas are familiar with this cycle and prepare by taking their valuables to relatives in flood-free areas and by stocking up on food and water for the heavy rains and flooding that occur each monsoon season.

Bangladesh is one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries. According to a 2015 World Bank Institute analysis, about 3.5 million people are at risk of riverine flooding each year.

But this year’s floods caught many people in the southeast by surprise.

In flood-hit districts such as Feni, Cumilla and Lakshmipur – regions close to the Indian border – many blame India for releasing water from the Dumbur dam in Tripura state in the middle of last week. India denies opening the floodgates.

The dam, a low structure about 30 metres (100 ft) high, is located more than 120 km (75 mi) from the border with Bangladesh. It produces electricity that feeds into the grid used by Bangladesh and was built on the Gumti River, which joins the Meghna in Bangladesh.

Tripura is also facing severe flooding, killing 31 people and displacing more than 100,000 residents in relief camps. Floods and landslides have affected nearly 1.7 million people in India.

Kamrul Hasan Nomani, 41, a resident of Lakshmipur, told Al Jazeera that floodwaters were up to his knees in his house and much of it had been damaged.

He is convinced that his village would never have had chest-high water if the dam had not been opened.

For Nomani, like many affected by the floods, the crisis has generated anti-India sentiment, with many believing that India deliberately opened the dam without warning. “They did it deliberately because their favorite government, led by (former Prime Minister Sheikh) Hasina, has collapsed in Bangladesh,” Nomani alleged.

On August 5, Hasina’s 15-year rule came to an abrupt end following mass student-led protests. Hasina, widely seen as New Delhi’s favorite leader in Bangladesh, sought refuge in India. Anti-Indian sentiment that had existed when Hasina was prime minister, fueled by allegations of Indian interference to keep her in power, has escalated since she fled to India.

India blamed the floods on excessive rainfall, but acknowledged that a power and communications outage caused by the floods on August 21 prevented regular river updates from being sent to downstream neighbours in Bangladesh.

Shafiqul Alam, spokesman for Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who is leading Bangladesh’s new interim government, told reporters in Dhaka that Pranay Verma, India’s high commissioner to Bangladesh, had informed the interim government that water from the dam was “automatically released” due to the elevated water levels.

Sarder Uday Raihan, an executive engineer at the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre in Bangladesh, told Al Jazeera that the agency usually receives information about rising water levels in rivers in India twice a day.

“But this time India did not share any updates. Without accurate information, it is difficult to make an accurate flood forecast,” he said, adding that timely warnings could have helped prevent deaths and damage.

Destroyed houses and crops

Mohamad Khalequzzaman, a professor of geology at Lock Haven University in the United States, told Al Jazeera that the last flood to hit districts such as Feni, Cumilla and Lakshmipur was in 1988.

“The main cause of this year’s flooding appears to be the unusual rainfall in the region, but several other factors have aggravated the situation,” he explained.

He noted that rainfall from August 20 through Friday ranged from 200 to 493 mm (8 to 19.4 in), compared to the usual 120 to 360 mm (4.7 to 14.2 in) at various locations in Tripura and eastern Bangladesh, which he described as unusually “heavy” for that region during the monsoon.

Khalequzzaman added that the sudden release of dam water during an already severe flood season may have contributed to the flooding in the Gomati River catchment, but it is unlikely to have contributed significantly to the flooding in Feni town, Sonagazi and Chhagalnaiya Upazilas as they are not in the river catchment area.

He further explained that the watershed soil is already saturated and most of the rainwater is entering surface waters, leading to flooding of nearby rivers in the affected districts.

He also pointed out that unplanned urbanization over the years has led to a build-up of silt. This silt, along with roads, buildings and embankments, especially along the Gomati and Muhuri rivers, prevents the flood waters from draining away.

He also said that illegal companies are taking over their land and using the Gomati and Feni rivers for transport, for example, which has destroyed much of the natural drainage system in these areas.

“The combination of torrential rains, disruptions to river flow in both India and Bangladesh, loss of natural drainage, siltation of the riverbed and obstructions to surface flow have all contributed to the severe flooding,” he said.

In a still flooded village in Cumilla, the house of Abdul Matin, a teacher, has been destroyed.

“I have lost everything. My corrugated iron house has been washed away. I am not sure how I will cope with the financial devastation the flood has caused,” Matin said.

He does not believe that the flooding was caused solely by heavy rains and damage to the natural drainage system. “I hold India responsible for this,” he said. “This was India’s water.”

Ismail Mridha, a 46-year-old farmer from Sonagazi Upazila in Feni, told Al Jazeera that the flooding destroyed both his house and his farmland. “My house, made of mud and corrugated iron, was completely destroyed and the farmland where I grew eggplant and bottle gourd was washed away,” he said.

“I survived the flood, but I’m not sure how I will recover from the financial devastation.”