The night the rains came
Within the space of 24 hours, more than 15,000 people were affected by heavy rains that caused flash flooding in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps and host community.
Montaz Begum clutches baby Mohamed closely as she describes how he almost fell into the waist-high water that flooded their home in the middle of the night. As the water came pouring in, she and her husband grabbed their children and evacuated to a nearby learning centre, almost losing Mohamed in the process. They spent a sleepless night in the centre and returned the next morning to find their few possessions destroyed and mud throughout their shelter.
Events such as these are traumatic for anyone, but for Montaz and her family it signifies loss at a time when they already have very little. She is a Rohingya refugee who fled violence in Myanmar in 2017. Now she lives in Teknaf, in the Cox’s Bazar region of Bangladesh. She depends on humanitarian assistance to survive. The area is vulnerable to heavy monsoons and cyclones and in early September it recorded its heaviest 24 hours of rainfall this year.
Montaz’s entire block was temporarily relocated while flash flooding took hold. For many of them, it was the first time they’d experienced a weather event of that nature.
“There was water everywhere here, I have lost everything,” says Noor Bahar who lives in the same block with her daughter and grandson.
“This is my first experience with flooding, the place where I used to live in Myanmar was on high land so we never had floods. I am very upset. I can’t cook, I can’t sit anywhere, and I can’t perform my prayers because I don’t have my home.”
Humanitarian aid organisations have been providing extra support to the 15,000 or so people affected by this latest monsoon. That includes the Wold Food Programme (WFP) which is providing hot meals to people who cannot cook and extra food rations to those who can.
Rain, cyclones and flooding do not come as a surprise, nor are they completely unexpected — in fact WFP staff work year-round to mitigate the potential impact of all climate-related emergencies. This includes pre-positioning stocks of food around the camps, reforestation, stabilising slopes that are at risk of landslides, and building better roads and drainage systems for when heavy rains inevitably hit. Still, the impact of 48 hours of incessant rainfall has been felt by many and it’s difficult to imagine what it would’ve been like if all this work hadn’t been done.
We leave Montaz and Noor’s block and walk through an area that was completely flooded 24 hours ago. Men and women take a break from cleaning what they can and come to the door to invite us inside. We’re led to the back of Jahed Hossain’s house and he shows us where the land holding up his makeshift kitchen had slipped and instead of a kitchen there’s a three-metre drop to a small waterway at the bottom.
A bit further along and Neer Ahmed sits with his children as they eat a hot meal provided by WFP.
“Last night the water was up to this,” he says, pointing to a point on his doorway around one metre high. “I took my children and ran towards the mosque. When the water came in, the kids were asking me what was happening. I told them that it’s flooding and they had to save their lives first.”
More than 72,000 refugees have been affected by heavy rains since 21 April 2019. WFP continues to provide usual food support as well as providing extra assistance to people adversely impacted by weather conditions.
There are more than 900,000 people living as refugees in Cox’s Bazar and WFP is providing life-saving assistance to more than 95% of them. You can support WFPs work here.
