Flood-affected people have started to return to their homesteads, they left in the past week for safe shelters, only to find trails of devastation caused by floods in northern districts, as floodwaters continue to recede.
With floodwater receding, the flood-affected people of the northern districts have started returning to their homesteads they left in the past week for safe shelters only to find trails of devastation.
Flood victims are now left with their houses and roads ravaged and crop fields devastated.
They now find it hard to make their houses liveable and arrange drinking water as all the hand pumps, submerged by the flood, are not usable.
Rising floodwater prompted the residents of many villages of the northern districts to flee homes leaving foodstuffs and other things early in the past week.
Residents were found on Saturday to have returned to their houses at Doaliparaa village of Taraganj upazila in Rangpur, which was under the floodwater for a week.
Some residents of the village were, however, still out of their homes and evidence of the destruction remained at the houses.
The roads of the village were found in dilapidated conditions and not fit even for cycling as the floodwater washed away many parts of the roads.
Middle-aged farmer Abdul Hamid said on his house premises that they returned home on Saturday from the nearby shelter and began working to make the house liveable.
It would take at least a week to make the house liveable for his 20-member family, he added.
Hamid said that he was counting the costs from the devastated floods as his planted Aman paddy on 10 bighas of land was completely damaged.
‘I do not know how I will recover the loss. My family and also the livestock are largely dependent on Aman but the whole paddy filed was damaged,’ he added.
Hamid said that he badly needed some cash and food to primarily overcome the situation.
Ashek Uddin, a day labourer of the village, who found his house in a shattered condition after returning home on Friday, described how the flood engulfed his house and forced his family to leave home for a safe shelter.
‘It was beyond my assumption. I saw floodwater some 100 metres away from my house in the evening on August 10 but at the mid-night I found myself soaked on the bed,’ he said.
‘I woke up and found floodwater in my house…I left home for a nearby primary school without taking anything with me except my family,’ he said.
He said that he was used to earn livelihood working in the crop fields but all the crop fields of the village were damaged by the flood.
The day labourer lamented that he did not know how he would earn money for his family to survive.
Most of the flood affected people of the village complained that they got almost nothing from the government despite they lost everything in the flood.
New Age found the similar scenario in most of the flood-hit areas of Nilphamari, Rangpur, Lalmonirhat and Kurigram.
Similar devastation caused by floods was reported from the other Northern districts, including Dinajpur, Panchagarh, Thakurgaon and Gaibandha.
Nilphamari deputy commissioner Mohammad Khaled Rahim said that the departments concerned were finalising the estimate of damaged crop fields, roads, houses and livestock.
He said that he witnessed massive devastation by floods on roads, houses and crop fields during his visit to different areas of the district.
Lalmnirhat deputy commissioner Shafiul Arif said that the flood wreaked havoc on the roads, houses and crop fields in the district.
Source: New Age