The flood situation in the country in certain areas of the Sylhet region is turning grim to say the least. Surely, this is a regional flood unlike countrywide devastating floods in the past. But in ferocity and posing destruction to lives and properties this regional flood is looking very serious indeed. As it is and reportedly, we have no clear picture of what happened in some areas of the Sylhet district as flood waters rose and spread too fast beating century old records. In these badly battered areas of Sylhet, people were struggling for sheer survival amid tree tops and high rise buildings which are far short of need.
Under the situation what is desperately needed is just rescuing the people from marooned conditions at the fastest by trying out all non conventional ways. It is known that many locally available volunteers are available. But they have no specialist experience in doing such emergency rescue activities and would require supports from the army, navy and other workers from disaster mitigating agencies, to do their best in rescuing and bringing to safety the marooned people.
The main thing to see is that there is not too much that can be locally done to mitigate the sufferings of floods . The current localized flood has origin from across the borders from excessive rainfall where people are in terrifying conditions from the ferocity of the flood. This external factor means we are dependent on nature automatically taming its fury leading to flood waters receding quickly. But such a possibility is not seen yet by our flood forecasters and that is why the situation is described as grim.
The army and navy in Bangladesh has been already deployed and they are doing a commendable job of rescuing marooned people. But they need to be deployed extensively and should also engage in relief and rehabilitation activities. Where helicopters can land and refuel, these areas need to be used to temporarily shelter rescued people and supply them with indispensable food, cash and other essentials.
Meanwhile, the civil administration must be readied with utmost emergency to start doing relief and rehabilitation activities. Flood relief through announcing how many bags of food grains, dry foods and other essentials have been provided are not enough. Corrupt activities also usually accompany relief efforts. Therefore, it is important that such corruptions are stopped and the flood stricken people get the benefits of relief activities now underway.
After the flood waters start receding, the flood hit people will require relief on a large scale. The district administration must be geared efficiently from now on to ensure the carrying out of extensive relief activities with corruption in them severely controlled.
It is heard that people in Sylhet are generally resourceful and they would be in a position to help themselves. But this may not be a reality in the ground once flood waters start receding. The scale of devastations there in the current flooding was probably too bad and long term flood relief and carrying out of the same extensively and incorruptibly would surely be required.