SITTWE (AFP) – Thousands fled Myanmar’s west coast and officials in neighboring Bangladesh raced to evacuate Rohingya refugees on Saturday as the most powerful cyclone in the region for over a decade churned across the Bay of Bengal.
Cyclone Mocha was packing winds of up to 220 kilometers per hour (136 miles per hour), according to India’s meteorological office, equivalent to a category four hurricane.
It is expected to weaken before making landfall on Sunday morning between Cox’s Bazar, where nearly one million Rohingya refugees live in camps largely made up of flimsy shelters, and Sittwe on Myanmar’s western Rakhine coast.
On Saturday Sittwe residents piled possessions and pets into cars, trucks and tuk-tuks and headed for higher ground, according to AFP reporters.
“We have our grandma in our family and we have to take care of her,” Khine Min told AFP from a truck packed with his relatives on a road out of the state capital.
“There is only one man left in Sittwe to take care of our homes.”
Shops and markets in the town of about 150,000 people were shuttered, with many locals sheltering in monasteries.
Kyaw Tin, 40, said he could not leave the area as his son was in a local hospital.
“I hope this cyclone won’t come to our state. But if this fate happens we can’t ignore it,” he said.
“I’m worried that this cyclone will affect our state just like Nargis did,” he added, referring to a 2008 storm that killed more than 130,000 people in southern Myanmar.
Myanmar’s junta authorities were supervising evacuations from villages along the Rakhine coast, state media reported Friday.
Myanmar Airways International said all its flights to Rakhine state had been suspended until Monday.
In neighboring Bangladesh officials moved to evacuate Rohingya refugees from “risky areas” to community centers, while hundreds of people fled a top resort island.
“Cyclone Mocha is the most powerful storm since Cyclone Sidr,” Azizur Rahman, the head of Bangladesh’s Meteorological Department, told AFP.
That cyclone hit Bangladesh’s southern coast in November 2007, killing more than 3,000 people and causing billions of dollars in damage.
Bangladeshi authorities have banned the Rohingya from constructing permanent concrete homes, fearing it may incentivize them to settle permanently rather than return to Myanmar, which they fled five years ago.
“We live in houses made of tarpaulin and bamboo,” said refugee Enam Ahmed, who resides at the Nayapara camp near the border town of Teknaf.
“We are scared. We don’t know where we will be sheltered. We are in a panic.”