Incessant rain and subsequent flooding and minor landslide have killed three people and left about half a million people stranded in Cox’s Bazar. Local people as well as the Rohingya refugees living on deforested hill slopes in the district are affected by the rainfall from the early days of the monsoon season. Local people, as district authorities say, are generally unwilling to evacuate, leaving behind their belongings and the relocation of refugees from their camp sites is hardly possible. Considering the socio-economic situation of the local people and the reality of refugees living on hilly land in Cox’s Bazar, the government needed a landslide protection plan. The ministry of disaster management should, more importantly, ensure adequate relief for the people left stranded by the flash flood. A warning for further rainfall, flash flood and landslide without relief supplies and protection plan are futile.

The recent rain fall has affected Ukhia, Ramu and the district headquarters gravely. Main town areas have been under two-to-three feet water for the past few days. Such water stagnation is a sign of a failing drainage system. The 34 camps built to shelter the Rohingyas, who fled military violence in Rakhine State of Myanmar, have lived in these landslide-prone areas. The problem of water stagnation or the threat of landslide is, therefore, a known but unaddressed concern of the district administration. While it is difficult to relocate the Rohingya refugees from their camps, the government should take up the issue with the international community that the temporary shelter in an area that is prone to landslide can be a dangerous proposition. For its own citizens, the government cannot deny its systemic failure to address the problem of landslide and unpreparedness to tackle flash flood. In the deadliest incident of landslide, more than 150 people were killed in Rangamati in July 2017. The same year, flash flood caused by heavy rainfall in the neighbouring India resulted in major loss of boro harvest in the haor region of Sylhet. The environment ministry, in association with the disaster management ministry, should immediately draw up a flash flood response plan to mitigate the life-threatening landslide situation and execute relief plans to encourage evacuation in times of natural disasters.

The Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre has already observed the swelling of water in major rivers, signalling an early flood. During the COVID-19 outbreak, a flood situation will further deepen the prevailing public health crisis. While it is important that the government should ensure relief supplies for the people affected by the recent rainfall and landslide in Cox’s Bazar, it is even more crucial to have a holistic disaster management plan to tackle a probable flood situation during the COVID-19 outbreak.