On the frontlines: witnessing the human struggle and hope amid Bangladesh’s catastrophic 2024 Eastern Flood

The Eastern Flood, which began in the third week of August, is one of the most devastating floods in recent times in Bangladesh, causing widespread damage across 12 remote districts in the country. This flood has affected 5.8 million people and claimed the lives of more than 70 individuals. As a member of Oxfam in Bangladesh’s Emergency Response Team, I witnessed this flood firsthand while conducting rapid assessments and distributing relief from 25th to 30th August. In this article, I share my experiences and insights based on what I observed and learned in the two worst-hit districts, Feni and Noakhali.

Crying for water while standing in water

It was 27th August. I had gone to Alockdia, a remote village in Feni for rapid assessment, where the water level was so high that we had to rent a speedboat to move around. That afternoon, while our team was returning to Feni town in the speedboat, a local volunteer who was with us called out in front of a house standing in 3 feet of water. The boat couldn’t approach the yard of the house as it was surrounded by trees. The house belonged to a shopkeeper the volunteer knew. I said, ‘In this much water, no one could possibly stay at home. Surely, he and his family has moved to a flood shelter.’ A moment later, we heard a splash. I saw a middle-aged man swimming toward our speedboat. As he got closer, he said there was no drinking water in his house, and it would be great if we could provide some. Our assessment team didn’t carry any relief materials, but we had a few two-litre bottles of mineral water for ourselves. We handed him a bottle and some packs of crackers.

In both Feni and Noakhali, I witnessed a severe shortage of safe drinking water. In many areas, the tube wells were still submerged under floodwaters, making it impossible to draw water from them. In places where the floodwaters had somewhat receded, the water from the tube wells was still muddy and dirty.

Being a remote area, most people there used clay stoves, which were either submerged or destroyed by the floods, and the continuous rain and flooding meant there was a shortage of dry firewood to use as fuel. As a result, they couldn’t even boil water to make it safe for drinking. I saw many people collecting rainwater and drinking it without boiling it. However, the rainwater that trickled down from tin roofs couldn’t be considered entirely clean.

Those who lived near a market situated at higher levels or close to the highway were able to buy bottled mineral water, but due to the mismatch between supply and demand, the price of these water bottles had skyrocketed. The small amount of water that I saw being distributed with relief in Feni and Noakhali was insufficient compared to the need. Many were forced to drink unsafe water, which was evident from the post-flood rise in diarrhoea cases in Feni and Noakhali. Hospitals struggled to cope with the influx of patients needing treatment for diarrhoea.

Floodwaters reaching rooftops

One of the families I spoke to in Alockdia village lived in a single-storey house. While talking, they pointed to a faint mark just below the cornice of their roof, showing us how high the floodwaters had risen in the first few days. This was a common story in Feni and Noakhali, where I heard from many people that in some areas, tin roofs had to be cut open to rescue people trapped inside. When the water rose, they moved towards lofts under the tin roofs, and as the water kept rising, it became impossible to climb down or escape.

Although the water levels had receded somewhat by the time I visited, many of the houses still had standing water inside. These houses’ basic structure, mostly made with wooden pillars or bamboo, were showing signs of decay, with people fearing that their homes might collapse once the water fully receded. The majority of people were unable to save their wooden furniture, bedding or clothes from the floodwaters. Many had lost their cooking utensils, which had floated away in the currents. The floors of the houses were caked in thick mud, as the floodwaters deposited silt all over. As they stood in their homes, many people seemed unsure of how they would rebuild their lives after the water was gone.

The dismal state of the flood shelters

After the floodwaters rose, almost all affected areas in Feni and Noakhali saw people seeking refuge in nearby schools, colleges, or madrassas, which were turned into makeshift flood shelters. However, these shelters had limited capacity compared to the demand. As a result, many people had no choice but to return to their submerged homes. Even those who managed to get into the shelters did not find favourable conditions – there was a lack of adequate lighting, which posed a risk to movement and security at night. Being located in remote areas, these makeshift flood shelters – schools, colleges and madrassas – lacked emergency kits as well. The latrines were unsanitary, and many people brought their livestock with them, leading to unhygienic conditions. At night, people were plagued by mosquitoes, unable to sleep, and there was also the constant fear of snake bites. For food, those in the shelters had to rely almost entirely on relief supplies that were delivered to the centres.

The further from a highway or district centre, the less aid reached flood-affected areas

On the morning of 28th August, I had the opportunity to visit Parshuram in Feni, a region right next to the Bangladesh–India border that had been severely affected by the flood. The area I visited was not submerged, and nearby, I saw a temporary flood shelter where the Bangladesh Army was providing support and assistance. Outside the gate of the shelter, there was a crowd of people, many of whom had travelled from villages 6–8 kilometres away in search of relief. Aid had not yet reached their villages.

In my five-day experience, I generally observed that the further a flood-affected area was from the highway or district centre, the less aid had reached it. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, at the beginning of the flood, the water levels were so high that even parts of the highway and district centres were submerged. As a result, the relief that arrived in Feni or Noakhali from different parts of Bangladesh had to be distributed to flood shelters or communities near the highways and district centres. The available relief was also insufficient compared to the demand, so distribution remained confined to areas close to the highways and district centres, leaving distant areas unreached.

Secondly, even though many people wanted to take relief to distant areas early on, it wasn’t possible due to a lack of boats, or where boats were available, there was a shortage of fuel. In the northern districts of Bangladesh, where floods occur almost every year, most households have a small dinghy, which proves to be useful during floods. However, the situation in Feni and Noakhali was different. Since these districts are not flood-prone, the local population was not prepared in the same way. Many who came to provide relief brought boats and boatmen from outside Feni or Noakhali, but even then, the boatmen were hesitant to navigate distant areas in unfamiliar landscapes.

Thirdly, by the time the water levels on rural roads connecting distant areas had started to recede, there wasn’t enough water to take relief-laden boats through those areas. Some roads were also damaged, making it dangerous for large relief trucks to travel. I had the chance to travel to some of these remote areas in Feni using locally operated tractor-pulled cargo boxes. Although these tractor-pulled cargo boxes couldn’t carry much relief, they were suitable for navigating the broken, muddy, waterlogged rural roads. But even though they could reach remote areas, the limited amount of relief they could carry made it difficult to meet the overwhelming demand for aid.

The silent suffering of women

In all the places I visited in Feni and Noakhali, I observed that the majority of the women were not involved in any income-generating activities. They were entirely dependent on the male members of their families. This dependency affected their access to relief and information. In many woman-headed households, essential relief didn’t arrive in time because there were no adult male members in the family to go and search for it. Additionally, due to the lack of mobile network and electricity, flood-related information didn’t reach women directly – it was conveyed to them through male family members or neighbours who gathered information while outside.

Both men and women faced challenges when latrines and bathing spaces were submerged during the floods, but this problem was especially severe for women. Many were forced to relieve themselves in open spaces during the dark of night, where there was no privacy. Some women even mentioned that they tried to reduce their water intake or fast in an attempt to delay the need for sanitation.

Everyone in mental shock and trauma

‘I have never seen a flood of this intensity in this area in my 73 years of life,’ an elderly man in Senbag, Noakhali, told me while we were taking a break from relief distribution on the night of 26th August. In every area I visited in Noakhali and Feni for assessment and relief distribution, middle-aged and elderly people shared the same experience with me. According to them, signs of the flood were visible amid the heavy rains, from 17th–18th August, but no one had anticipated that the water levels would rise so quickly. In many places, the water went from knee-deep to neck-deep in just one night, eventually reaching the rooftops.

While standing on the veranda of a flood shelter in Noakhali, I spoke with a middle-aged man who had taken refuge there with his family and two cows. As he fed his cows half-wet straw, he said:

The water you’re seeing now was around two feet higher just two-three days ago. My house is still neck-deep in water. We couldn’t bring anything with us to the flood shelter. I’m worried about when the water will fully recede, and even when it does, how we’ll start life again when we return home.

From all the conversations I had, it was clear that the severity of the flood had deeply shaken everyone.

The finest example of volunteerism and altruism

Amid the fragile mental state, what I witnessed young people doing in Feni and Noakhali can only be described as heroic. One of the young local men who guided us by speedboat through Alockdia village in Feni was set to leave for China in the second week of September to pursue higher education on a scholarship from the Chinese government. At least two of the people with us still had knee-deep water inside their homes, yet they stepped forward to help their community. Numerous volunteer groups, individual missions, and organisations brought relief from different parts of Bangladesh, and local youth, in particular, took on the task of guiding them through various areas without any compensation. Their sole motivation was to ensure that the flood-affected people in their district received aid. Some even managed traffic on the highways, clearing two lanes of the four-lane roads so that relief vehicles and response teams from Bangladesh’s port city, Chattogram, as well as the capital, Dhaka, and other districts, could quickly reach the affected areas.

People want to talk

The first day I was heading from Feni to Noakhali was 25th August. Many parts of the highway were still submerged under ankle- to knee-deep water. From the shuttle on the highway, all I could see were tin houses submerged waist-deep or even chest-deep in water. And the water wasn’t still – it had a strong current. People were crowding the markets that were situated on the highway. Since the water reached the edge of the highway, I saw people in many areas using rafts made from banana trees to try to get around. In some places, the air was filled with the stench of swollen, dead cattle floating in the floodwaters. The situation was dire, and I was unsure if people would be willing to talk to us for the assessment.

With this uncertainty in mind, the next day I walked through waist-deep water in a small hamlet near Kabirhat in Noakhali. I was accompanied by two development workers from a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) who were helping and guiding us. I managed to talk to four or five people to understand their current situation, the damage they had faced, the challenges they were dealing with, and the kind of help they needed. We stood in the water as we talked.

What struck me was that despite standing in floodwater, these people were eager to talk. They weren’t annoyed or frustrated. They wanted someone to listen to them, someone to check on them. When I visited Alockdia village in Feni, I noticed the same thing. Our speedboat stopped near houses standing in 2–3 feet of water, and the people we spoke to either talked from their rooftops or through windows, sometimes from a distance. This experience reminded me of how important it is to be present during times of distress – just standing with people, letting them express their thoughts and emotions, and sharing their sorrow can make a difference.

Final thoughts

The devastation I witnessed in Feni and Noakhali due to the floods – homes, livestock, and crops all severely impacted – will likely take several years to fully recover from. To restore the lives of the affected people as quickly as possible, it is crucial for the local government, along with humanitarian and development organisations responding to the flood, to adopt long-term plans that go beyond mere relief efforts, offering sustainable and lasting solutions for tackling similar disasters in the future.

In the short term, however, the highest priorities should be rebuilding damaged homes, ensuring a supply of safe drinking water, guaranteeing food security, improving sanitation, and creating sustainable livelihood opportunities. Special attention should also be given to incorporating sustainable agricultural practices into long-term development plans for Feni and Noakhali, as most families in these flood-affected areas rely on agriculture. Additionally, creating income-generating opportunities for women and making them self-reliant is essential. Providing vocational training, opportunities for small businesses, and initiatives for economic empowerment will ease their path to recovery. Public health cannot be overlooked either. It is crucial to provide mental health support and raise awareness, as well as prepare for the waterborne diseases that often follow floods.

Looking ahead, the possibility of floods becoming an annual disaster in the eastern districts of Bangladesh, like Feni and Noakhali, cannot be ruled out as climate change has intensified extreme rainfall events in Bangladesh and Northeast India in recent decades. Therefore, to better manage future risks, it is worth considering the introduction and promotion of micro-insurance schemes at the grassroots level, supported by development organisations and financial institutions. Moreover, as part of flood preparedness, raising awareness among local communities and providing training on flood management is essential, empowering them to take a proactive and effective role in future flood responses.

Pradipto Vaskar Rakshit is a Humanitarian Professional and Independent Researcher, currently working as Senior Programme Officer, Oxfam in Bangladesh (OiBD).