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29 March 2024

Tornados and cyclone wreck havoc from Texas to India

Published
By Agencies

A tornado ripped through a picturesque lakeside Texas town on Wednesday, resulting in multiple fatalities and destroying or damaging homes, authorities said.

The tornado ripped through the Brazos River courthouse town of Granbury about 8 p.m. as part of an outbreak of severe weather that plagued the region Wednesday afternoon and evening.

Hardest hit were two neighborhoods, Rancho Brazos Estates and DeCordova Ranch, in the southern end of the town of about 8,000 residents about 65 miles  (105 million kilometers) southwest of Dallas, said Hood County sheriff's Lt. Kathy Jiveden.

There were multiple fatalities, she said, but she had no estimate of dead or injured or the number of homes destroyed.

Officers "are going house to house" looking for residents trapped, injured or dead in the rubble of demolished homes near Lake Granbury, Jiveden said.

Another tornado hit the small town of Millsap, about 40 miles (65 million kilometers) west of Fort Worth. Parker County Judge Mark Kelley said roof damage was reported to several houses and a barn was destroyed, but no injuries were reported.

Hail as large as grapefruit also pelted the area around Mineral Wells on Wednesday evening. A police dispatcher reported only minor damage.

Cyclone

One person was killed Thursday as Cyclone Mahasen hit Bangladesh's southern Patuakhali coast, packing winds of up to 90 kilometres (55 miles) per hour, officials said.

"Cyclone Mahasen started crossing the Patuakhali coast at 9:00 am (0300 GMT) Thursday," Shamsuddun Ahmed, deputy director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, told AFP, adding, "it is not a severe cyclone".

"Its centre is still in the Bay of Bengal (and) will hit the Chittagong coast in the afternoon," he said, as provincial administrators said one man had drowned in a coastal district after slipping in heavy rains.

Evacuation

Bangladesh is evacuating one million people with Cyclone Mahasen expected to hit its low-lying delta coast on Thursday evening, said the United Nations, which estimated 4.1 million people were at risk due to gale-force winds, heavy rain and flooding.

Bangladesh has raised its storm warning to seven, on a scale with a maximum of 10, as Mahasen approaches one of the poorest countries in Asia with winds of around 100 kmh (60 mph).
 
The storm has already killed at least seven people and displaced 3,881 in Sri Lanka as it tracked across the Bay of Bengal towards Bangladesh. 
 
A boat carrying Rohingya Muslims in neighbouring Myanmar capsized at around midnight on Monday after hitting rocks off Pauktaw in Rakhine State while evacuating ahead of the storm. Official media said 42 people were rescued but 58 were missing.
 
Mahasen weakened slightly overnight, but remained a category 1 cyclone as it continued its northeast path towards Bangladesh.
 
"The government has ordered the evacuation of about one million people from 15 coastal districts," said the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
 
"As per the latest storm trajectory, 4.1 million people have been identified as living in at risk areas in the districts of Chittagong and Cox's Bazar," it said in its latest update.
 
A storm surge of up to 2.1 metres (seven feet) is expected to hit Bangladesh's delta, with cyclone-whipped waves already washing the coast.
 
The port in Chittagong, which has a population of about three million, and the airport in Cox's Bazar were closed on Wednesday.
 
"Mahasen will make landfall on Thursday evening, local time, bringing heavy rain to much of the region and gusty winds to southern Bangladesh and western Myanmar," said meteorologists at Accuweather.com storm forecasters.
 
"Mudslides will also be a concern as the heavy rain spreads farther north and east on Thursday night and Friday into easternmost India and northern Myanmar."
 
Meteorologists said Mahasen should weaken quickly once its makes landfall.
 
Bangladesh has more than 1,400 cyclone-proof buildings on standby, but across its eastern border in Myanmar tens of thousands of people on the coast are sheltering in makeshift camps and huts made of timber and palm fronds.
 
In 2008, Cyclone Nargis killed up to 140,000 people in Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta, south of the main city, Yangon.
 
According to the US-based Tropical Storm Risk, Mahasen should track northeast after hitting Chittagong, missing Myanmar, before weakening into a tropical rain depression.
 
The Myanmar government had planned to move 38,000 internally displaced people, by Tuesday but many have refused to relocate from camps in Rakhine State in the west of the country, afraid of the authorities' intentions.
 
At least 192 people were killed in June and October last year in an ethnic violence between. 
 
At a camp near the sea on the outskirts of Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State, several people told Reuters on Wednesday they would rather perish in the storm than evacuate.
 
"We arrived here last year because of the clashes between Rakhine and Muslims. I lost everything. Both my mother and my two young daughters died," said Hla Maung, 38. "If the cyclone hits here, I will. Everyone here wants to die in the storm because we lost everything last year."