Evacuation dilemmas of coastal households during cyclone Amphan and amidst the COVID-19 pandemic: a study of the Southwestern region of Bangladesh

Abstract

Cyclone Amphan battered the coastal communities in the southwestern part of Bangladesh in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. These coastal communities were experiencing such a situation for the first time and faced the dilemma of whether to stay at home and embrace the cyclone or be exposed to the COVID-19 virus in the cyclone shelters by evacuating. This article intends to explore individuals’ decisions regarding whether to evacuate in response to cyclone Amphan and in light of the risks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, this study investigated evacuation behaviors among the households and explored the impacts of COVID-19 during the evacuation procedures. We conducted household surveys to collect primary information and undertook 378 samples for interviews at a precision level of 0.05 in fourteen villages. Despite the utmost effort of the government, the results demonstrated that 96.6% of people in the coastal area received a cyclone evacuation order before the cyclone’s landfall, and only 42% of people followed the evacuation order. The majority of households chose to stay at home because of fear of COVID-19 exposure in the crowded shelters. Although half of the evacuees were housed in cyclone shelters, COVID-19 preventive measures were apparently not set in place. Thus, this study will assist in crafting future government policies to enhance disaster evacuation plans by providing insights from the pandemic that can inform disaster management plans in the Global South.

Assessing Storm Surge Multi-Scenarios based on Ensemble Tropical Cyclone Forecasting

“…BMD's evacuation order for the entire southwest coast was not based on a specific surge scenario (e.g., worst case) and forecasted meteorological conditions associated with it, leading to an excessive number of evacuees. Such a false alarm demotivated people to seek shelter when a Category 2 TC Amphan caused ~2.75 m storm surges and claimed at least 26 lives in 2020, despite the issuance of 'great danger' signal number ten (Raju, 2019;ReliefWeb, 2021;Alam et al, 2023). It seems that BMD took a safer and conservative decision during TC Fani by issuing signal no.…”

Development of Disaster Response Strategies for Multi-Disasters

“…For instance, when oods occurred during the pandemic in China, the government faced the di cult decision of whether or not to block the movement of people (Fan et al 2021). In Bangladesh, it was di cult for people to decide whether to move to shelter when encountering tropical cyclones or remain isolated to avoid the possibility of COVID-19 infection, (Alam et al 2022). In the United States, wild re prevention measures and re ghter training programs were disrupted (Ashraf 2021).…”

Dynamical characteristics of Amphan and its impact on COVID-19 cases in Bangladesh

“…Nevertheless, such approach should be reconsidered and reassessed under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, since maintaining a proper social distance to slow down the spread of the virus under the pandemic becomes a consensus (Baidya et al 2020 ; Greenstone and Nigam 2020 ; Kumar et al 2021 ). Many investigations have pointed out that the risk perception of coastal people about the potential infection threats of the COVID-19 pandemic can influence evacuation decisions during Amphan (Alam and Chakraborty 2021 ; Hadi et al 2021 ; Alam et al 2022 ). From another perspective, after the nationwide lockdown, the destruction of infrastructure and the pollution of clean water caused by Amphan could also further increase the difficulty of epidemic prevention and disaster recovery (Pramanik et al 2022 ).…”