Six dead as Cyclone Mocha makes landfall in Myanmar's west coast

Powerful Cyclone Mocha made landfall in western Myanmar Sunday, killing six people and bringing down trees, residents said, as humanitarian agencies warned of a severe impact on “hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people.”

The cyclone had earlier on Sunday intensified to a Category Five storm, with wind speeds reaching as high as 220 kilometers per hour (137 miles per hour), according to the Myanmar Department of Meteorology and Hydrology.

At least six people have been reported dead across Myanmar.

The United Nations and its humanitarian partners said they are preparing a “scaled-up cyclone response.”

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Myanmar said before the cyclone, an estimated six million people were “already in humanitarian need” in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, and the regions of Chin, Magway and Sagaing, where Mocha is expected to hit.

“Collectively, these states in the country’s west host 1.2 million displaced people, many of whom are fleeing conflict and are living in the open without proper shelter,” said OCHA, warning of “a nightmare scenario.” 

Earlier fears that the cyclone might directly hit Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh – where up to one million Rohingya refugees live in crowded, low-lying camps – did not materialize, reported a correspondent for BenarNews, an online news outlet affiliated with Radio Free Asia.

The cyclone made landfall at around 3 p.m. and moved on from the area after 5 p.m. It missed Cox’s Bazar city but hit refugee camps in Teknaf, a sub-district and Bangladesh’s southernmost town, and Saint Martin’s Island in the Bay of Bengal, damaging houses and uprooting trees, the correspondent reported.

About 2,000 houses were destroyed – including 1,200 houses on Saint Martin’s Island – and there was damage to 10,000 other homes, according to Muhammad Shaheen Imran, the head of Cox’s Bazar district civil administration. 

There were no reports of landslides in Teknaf, as feared by authorities.

“Thank God, we have been saved,” Bangladesh’s Minister for Disaster Management and Relief Md. Enamur Rahman told BenarNews. “We feared for huge damage, but we have yet to get reports of major damage.”

Saint Martin’s Island resident Halim Ali told BenarNews that his house was flattened and his belongings were washed away.

“Saint Martin’s is a devasted place: houses destroyed, trees uprooted,” he said.

Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, said that Mocha is one of the biggest storms that has ever occurred in the Bay of Bengal.

“It is stronger than Nargis,” Koll told RFA, referring to the cyclone that left nearly 140,000 people dead and missing in 2008.

Cyclone Mocha formed on Thursday, causing heavy rains and a coastal surge in Rakhine state starting on Friday. 

“Cyclone frequency is more or less the same in the Bay of Bengal – but once they form, they are intensifying quickly,” the scientist said. “This is in response to warmer oceans under climate change.”

Titon Mitra, the U.N. Development Program representative in Myanmar, tweeted: “Mocha has made landfall. 2m people at risk. Damage and losses are expected to be extensive. We are ready to respond and will need unhindered access to all affected communities.”

Myanmar state television reported that the military government is preparing to send food, medicine and medical personnel to the storm-hit area.

Killed by falling trees

Mocha started crossing the Rakhine coast in southwestern Myanmar on Sunday afternoon.

In Tachileik city in northeastern Shan state, a married couple were buried in their house in a landslide caused by heavy rains on Sunday morning, according to the Hla Moe Tachilek Social Assistance Association.

Two people in Rakhine state, one man in the Irrawaddy region and another man in the Mandalay region were killed by falling trees.

In Sittwe, Rakhine state’s capital, a telecom tower collapsed under high winds and mobile phone signals are down. Residents have been sharing images of damaged houses and roads on social media.

The winds were still ravaging Sittwe as of Sunday afternoon and local authorities warned its 150,000 inhabitants to stay indoors.

Hundreds of Sittwe’s residents were already evacuated to the inland town of Mrauk-U on Saturday. 

The Arakan Army, an ethnic Rakhine rebel group, said more than 10,000 people had been relocated from 21 villages on the coast and in low-lying areas in the state since Thursday.

"For a cyclone to hit an area where there is already such deep humanitarian need is a nightmare scenario, impacting hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people whose coping capacity has been severely eroded by successive crises," said UN humanitarian co-ordinator AI Ramanathan Balakrishnan.

The impact of climate change on the frequency of storms is still unclear, but we know that increased sea surface temperatures warm the air above and make more energy available to drive hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons.

As a result, they are likely to be more intense with more extreme rainfall.

The world has already warmed by about 1.1C since the industrial era began and temperatures will keep rising unless governments around the world make steep cuts to emissions.