Cyclone Sitrang has caused widespread damage to aman paddy in Faridpur. Rice fields have been flattened, and farmers said the paddy had only just started to ripen.

Several hundred trees were uprooted in the district town and various upazilas, damaging countless mud and brick homes. Traffic on the Dhaka-Faridpur-Barishal and Dhaka-Faridpur-Khulna highways was halted for about 10 hours because of fallen trees.

Residents of Bhanga, Boalmari, Alfadanga and other upazilas said they had been without electricity since dawn on Sunday, 23 October. Supply was also cut in other parts of the district from the afternoon and night of Monday, 24 October. Power returned to some parts of the town after noon on Tuesday, 25 October.

Local sources said ripening aman paddy suffered the most damage in the district. Transplanted aman was grown on about 65,000 hectares in the district's nine upazilas this season. Onions and winter vegetables were also damaged.

Azizul Sheikh (35), a farmer in Saltha upazila, said everything had been ruined by the water. The grain had fallen from the plants, and in many fields the rice had been flattened by the wind into the ground. "No paddy will come from these plants," he said.

Bhanga residents Haji Saifullah Shamim and Sohag Matubbar told Jagonews that power supply in Bhanga had been badly disrupted from Monday morning, before Sitrang arrived, and had been cut off continuously from the afternoon, causing great hardship.

In the Collegepara area of Alfadanga upazila, uprooted trees damaged seven or eight houses, but no one was hurt. Damage to mud houses was also reported in Charbhadrasan, and electricity poles broke in Alfadanga.

Mozammel Haque, executive engineer of West Zone Power Distribution Company Limited (WZPDCL) in Faridpur, said the storm damaged power lines in various places and snapped wires in many. Some transmitters also developed problems, so supply was off in some areas, but the situation began to improve from the afternoon.

Abul Hasan, general manager of Faridpur Palli Bidyut, said that after Monday afternoon the cyclone broke about a hundred poles on power lines in different parts of the district, and wires snapped at 144 spots, disrupting supply. "Our workers are working to restore normal supply," he said.

Partha Pratim Saha, executive engineer of the Faridpur Water Development Board, said the Padma bank protection embankment in Faridpur suffered no damage.

Ziaul Haque, deputy director of the district Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), told Jagonews that the extent of the damage was not yet known. Work is under way to assess the number of affected farmers and the area of crops lost.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.