Cyclone Mocha becomes a Category 5 hurricane as it approaches the coasts of Bangladesh and Burma

Cyclone Mocha has intensified to the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane as it approaches the coasts of Bangladesh and Burma in the Bay of Bengal, according to the latest update from the American Warning Center typhoons, Sunday May 15. A Category 5 hurricane is the highest classification on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

The cyclone is due to hit the coasts of Burma and Bangladesh at midday on Sunday, from where hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated. It is accompanied by winds that can reach 260 km / h, according to the Zoom Earth website, which classified it in the category of super cyclones. Mocha threatens the precarious camps where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees are crammed together, and provokes everywhere in his path a race against time to flee.

According to the Indian meteorological office, Mocha is expected to weaken slightly before making landfall on Sunday morning between Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, and Sittwe, a city of 150,000 inhabitants in Burma.

wind of panic

On Saturday, residents of Sittwe piled their belongings and pets into cars, trucks and tuk-tuks to head for higher places. Mocha should cause a tidal wave of up to 4 meters. 500 km away, in Yangon, the economic capital of Burma, the inhabitants were already feeling the rain and the wind on Sunday. The Myanmar Red Cross said in a statement that it “prepared to respond to a major emergency”.

In Bangladesh, 190,000 people have been evacuated from Cox’s Bazar and nearly 100,000 from the nearby city of Chittagong, authorities said. “They were taken to nearly 4,000 cyclone shelters”, said divisional commissioner Aminur Rahman. Rohingya refugees have been taken from “at-risk areas” to community centers, while thousands have fled the tourist island of St Maarten, located in Mocha’s path.