Mocha Dark

May 13, 2023 9:28 AM

At category 4 or 5, Cyclone Mocha is set to strike an area of land filled with refugee camps on the Myanmar coast of the Bay of Bengal. The camps are near the ocean and low in elevation. The last similar storm in strength and location (Nargis, 2008) killed over 100,000. In contrast to some sorts of natural disasters, hurricanes come with warning. The Red Crescent relief fund.
posted by dances_with_sneetches (3 comments total)

Forgive my ignorance, but it's my impression that all the residents can do is move to slightly higher ground, away from coastal flooding, right? I mean, nowhere will actually be dry or out of the wind from a storm like this?

I wish them all the luck in the world. Bad storms are scary and capricious.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:46 PM on May 13, 2023

After peaking as North Indian Ocean's strongest cyclone recorded, Mocha made landfall as a maximally forceful Category 4 250 km ph or 155 mph. It spared Bangladesh but struck Myanmar's world's largest refugee settlement.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:31 AM on May 14, 2023

I saw that update too, dances_with_sneetches. Small mercies. But given that the linked tweet shows corrugated metal and other makeshift construction materials flying in the high winds, I can only begin to imagine how terrifying it would be to be in a refugee camp in that situation:

Bangladesh missed the eyewall of Mocha, and was on the weaker left-front side of the storm. This gave the Bangladesh coast offshore winds below hurricane force, and very little storm surge, sparing the highly populous refugee camps the worst of Mocha’s impacts. Flooding from Mocha’s heavy rains will still be a concern in Bangladesh, though, and substantial wind damage was occurring for poorly-built structures (see Tweet below).

posted by spamandkimchi at 12:08 PM on May 15, 2023