Factors of cyclone disaster deaths in coastal Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh's success in disaster risk management is often evidenced by referencing the reduction of deaths caused by tropical cyclones — the Cyclone Gorky 1991 caused 147,000 deaths, the Cyclone Sidr 2007 caused 4500 deaths and only 6 deaths by the Cyclone Mora in 2017. This raises questions of how deaths occurred by tropical cyclones in the past and what factors still might contribute towards deaths from cyclone hazards? This study answers these questions through face-to-face interviews with 362 residents, field visits and observations across coastal Bangladesh. The findings indicate that there have been improvements in house structures and design, warning responses and evacuation processes to public cyclone shelters and informal cyclone shelter centres. In the past, due to a lack of built infrastructure, strong residential houses and public cyclone shelters, deaths occurred whilst living in fragile houses; attempting to survive through holding trees and floating in storm surges. The top ten factors that may still cause deaths by tropical cyclones include: (1) Living adjacent to the coast without an embankment or lack of embankment, or the failure of an established embankment; (2) the repeat of a 1991-like cyclone; (3) non-evacuation following early warning; (4) poor roads in remote areas to facilitate mass movement; (5) distance to and insufficient number of public cyclone shelters; (6) lack of protective measures for the rising number of elderly and disabled people; (7) community's unawareness; (8) communication failure during the emergency period; (9) failure to evacuate people from remote locations; and (10) Poor radio signal and mobile network issues resulting in no warning information being effectively and timely communicated. This study provides several key recommendations addressing these factors of deaths, to be implemented by individual, community, private sectors, non-government organisations (NGOs) and public sectors across coastal Bangladesh.