WRE-451 Assignment-1 1604037

2020 Flood of Bangladesh

Introduction:
Every year during the monsoon season, the vast northern regions in Bangladesh get inundated by huge surge
of upstream river flow. As a lower riparian country, Bangladesh receives a huge amount of water flowing to the
Bay of Bengal. But low-lying topography of the country makes it difficult to handle this much flow during the
monsoon. As a result, almost all the river in the country widens and floods the nearest lands. Consequently, the
reduced energy of the flow causes the rivers to sediment huge amount of sediment and these floods sustain for
long time causing a huge crisis to the mass people.

So this years (2020) monsoon flood has a gross impact on the Northern, North-Eastern and South-Eastern region
of Bangladesh. The floods have impacted about quarter of Bangladesh with moderate to severe impact on 15
Districts. This prolonged flood with current covid-19 pandemic situation really had an exacerbating effect on the
life and livelihood of the people in this region.

Extent of the Flood:

 According to NAWG (Needs Assessment Working Group) data, this year the flood impacted in two spell,
1st spell started from 28th June and extend up to 5th of July while within the week the monsoon flood
started to impacted on 9th July with the flooding of extended areas. The heavy rainfall in upper started and
northern and north eastern basin resulted the flood in two basis at the same time.
 From the NDRCC data in august, 1022 unions from 158 upazila have been inundated by flood water,
affecting 5.4 million people and leaving about 1 million families water logged.
 To understand the extent of the devastating damage of the flood in terms of public property, some data
from GoB are presented: 34,000 sq km land areas (40% of the total land area) inundated, 110,696-hectare
crop land has been damaged, 100,223 toilet and 92,860 tube-well were out of order (DPHE data), 1902
schools were damaged.
 As per DGHS control room 135 people has already lost their life, mostly as a result of drowning is the
major cause of the death and among drowned death about 70% are child since 30th June 2020. Other
deaths include deaths due to lightning, snake bites, and other different water related health hazards.
 The satellite imagery-based analysis identified that Jamalpur experiencing flood in the highest portion of
the districts and subsequently Sunamganj, Sylhet, Tangail, Kurigram, Gaibandha and Netrokona districts
faced flooding more or less 50% of the areas.
 From some late surveys, the percentage of people displaced during the flood was very high compare to
the floods from recent years. Out of 334 surveyed union at least more than 10% people from 250 unions
had to move from their original location. This displacement causes hindrance to relief and rehabilitation
services.
WRE-451 Assignment-1 1604037
Infrastructural Damages:
 Having not being recovered from the damages of different flood protection infrastructures from previous
year monsoon floods, 220 unions have already reported having their embankments damaged. The
normal recovery cycle after a disaster is 3-5 years but due to back -to- back disaster this recovery cycle
is hampered.
 The most common housing structures of the northern region: Katcha or Jhupri are prone to severe
damages from water related disasters. As a result, the damages of houses were reported about 87% of
the 334 unions surveyed.

Covid-19 and the Flood:

 Due to the ongoing covid-19 pandemic crisis this year’s flood had an evermore devastating effect on the
planning and response to the disaster process.
 First of all the sheltering process of huge number of displaced people and provide them with proper social
distancing was almost an impossible task. So covid related sickness had a surge on the daily identification
rate. Also, it can be assumed that many of the people were not bought to health monitoring and Covid
testing.
 Physical access to primary health care is disrupted due to restricted mobility and due to inundation of
flood and COVID-19 pandemic. The survey shows that 73% of the affected unions suffered from
disrupted health care services, therefore, increasing the risk of mortality, morbidity, lack of nutrition
(where 75 union reported compromised nutrition care) which may escalate epidemic .

Economic Losses:
The Ministry of Agriculture estimates that the floods damaged 72.21 thousand hectares of Aus paddy
field causing losses worth Tk334 Crore, 70.82 thousand hectares of Aman paddy field causing losses
worth Tk 380 Crore as well as 7.91 thousand hectares of Aman seedbeds causing losses worth more
than Tk1 Crore.

Conclusion:
As this is a very common disaster with respect to Bangladesh, the recovery and reconstruction process should
be aligned with our economic constraint and that there are possibilities that before recovering from 2020 flood
there will be another one in 2021 as we are seeing a heavy monsoon rainfall from the month of June. So it is
common understanding that repair of the damaged infrastructures specially embankment, dykes, houses, safe
drinking water, sanitation facilities and the new covid 19 policy should be addressed. From our geographical
perspective we can only hope that the recovery of these devasting floods should be prompt so that the loss of
lives of people, livestock, the loss of cultivable lands and the country’s economic loss can be minimized.