Extent of The Disaster
One third of Chittagong, a city of five million residents, came under water due to heavy rainfall and tidal water. The flash floods in the hills caused mud slides and rubble to bury shanties at the foot of the hills near Chittagong Cantonment. Many residents took refuge in local mosques after losing their homes in the disaster. The death toll was reported to be at least 128, including at least 59 children, with more than 150 injured. This is expected to rise further as the rescue efforts got underway and additional reports were received. The government asked the local authorities to evacuate 8,000 people from Lebubagan, the worst hit area. The country-wide death toll from the floods and landslides neared 130 on June 12, according to Reuters. Most of the deaths were a result of the landslides or from buildings collapsing in the rain.
Communication infrastructure was badly affected with telephone links with the rest of the country and within the city inoperable. Kalurghat Radio Station had to be shut down as its offices were submerged in six feet of water. Flights to the city's Shah Amanat International Airport, were suspended and the Chittagong Port, serving 90% of the country's foreign trade, was closed.
Read more about this topic: 2007 Chittagong Mudslides
Famous quotes containing the words extent of the, extent of, extent and/or disaster:
“It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“The disaster ... is not the money, although the money will be missed. The disaster is the disrespect—this belief that the arts are dispensable, that they’re not critical to a culture’s existence.”
—Twyla Tharp (b. 1941)