Residents of Patia upazila are braced for the inevitable consequence of Cyclone Mahasen with the cautionary signal being raised to seven.
Volunteers of the Cyclone Preparedness Programme (CPP) are continuously announcing the news across the upazila.
The CPP volunteers are urging local people to make for cyclone shelters and safer places.
“My life will be thrown into uncertainty again if the cyclone Mahasen hits the coast. Like that of 1991, I have to start once again to cope with the aftereffect of the disaster,” said Ali Haider, 45, on Wednesday evening.
He was narrating the devastation the cyclone left in 1991, standing on the bank of Karnaphuli River in Chittagong.
Ali Haider lost his houses and cattle in that cyclone that claimed 50 people at Patia upazilla in Chittagong.
Altogether the cyclone that year killed about 138,000 people in the coastal districts of the country. Of them Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar were the hardest hit.
Like Ali Haider, Sarwar Uddin, 40, and Md Idris, 30, also had tales of misery after the catastrophe.
They said each time their locality is hit by natural disaster they have to begin life again.
“We have been facing it year after year as we are born to bear the pain”, said Idris.
About 90 members of the CPP volunteer’s team are working round the clock to inform the local people about the progress of the cyclone.
Mariam Bibi, 40, an inhabitant of Patia upazilla said she had already packed her necessary belongings to move to the cyclone shelters.
