Factors of cyclone disaster deaths in coastal Bangladesh

Abstract

Abstract Bangladesh’s success in disaster risk management is often evidenced by referencing the reduction of deaths by tropical cyclones ࣧ the Cyclone Gorky 1991 took 147,000 deaths, the Cyclone Sidr 2007 took 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 contributed to the reduction in deaths in the last two decades? This study answers this question by face-to-face interviews with 362 residents, field visits and observations in coastal Bangladesh. The findings indicate that there have been improvements in house structures and design, warning responses and evacuation 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 in fragile houses along the coast without embankment; (2) the repeat of a 1991-like cyclone; (3) non-evacuation following early warning; (4) poor roads in remote areas; (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 disaster period; (9) failure to evacuate people from remote locations; and (10) Poor radio signal and mobile network problems resulting in no warning information. 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 on coastal Bangladesh.