Sumi Jaladas crawled out from a doorway on her hands and knees and kneeled in the dirt in front of her corrugated steel home to watch her neighbors in the small village of Jela Para. 

It had just stopped raining and many women and children were out playing and dancing along a muddy, brick walkway. Most of the men were away fishing in the nearby Bay of Bengal.  

Sumi Jaladas says if her village has to escape rising water, she’s dependent on her family to bring her to safety. 

 

Credit:

 Kazi Riasat Alve/The World

Jaladas, 40, said she’s never been able to walk. She uses a wheelchair but said she doesn’t have the upper-body strength to use it on her own. To travel outside the neighborhood, she relies on a sibling to push her.

Jela Para, part of the Sitakund municipality located in Bangladesh’s southeastern Chattogram District, is prone to tropical cyclones and floods. When disaster strikes, villagers may need to evacuate quickly to a storm shelter or higher ground.  

For someone like Jaladas, the thought of having to suddenly flee to escape rising water can be horrifying.

Jaladas, who is unmarried, lives with one of her brothers and his family, and helps out with cooking. She said this is not an ideal situation, but feels that due to her disabilities, she would not be able to survive anywhere else.

“I’d like to live in a better place and have my own home,” she said. “But, I also can’t see well, so I can’t make handicrafts or sew.” She said her brother is responsible for saving her life in an emergency situation.

“It scares me. If my brother evacuates me, then I can evacuate, otherwise I just have to stay inside my house.”

“It scares me,” she said. “If my brother evacuates me, then I can evacuate, otherwise I just have to stay inside my house.” Jaladas said she has no choice but to follow her brother’s decisions. 

Sea-level rise and strong storms threaten communities across Bangladesh with extreme flooding. Global warming has exacerbated the threat, ruining farmland in coastal regions and compelling many to seek work and safety in other parts of the country.

Over 13 million Bangladeshis could be displaced by climate change by 2050, according to a United Nations report.  

Mohammad al-Amin, an environmental scientist at the University of Chittagong, said he has seen cyclones and tidal surges “totally wipe out” villages. 

An inlet in the Bay of Bengal in the Chattogram District causes a funneling effect, he explained, intensifying storms that have already gained strength due to warming ocean temperatures.   

While these disasters endanger everyone, Amin said senior citizens and people with a disability are more likely to die. 

“They are the most vulnerable,” he said. 

Just over a billion people worldwide — 1 in 5 people — have some kind of physical, sensory or developmental disability. In many countries, including Bangladesh, numerous educational, economic and social barriers limit or prevent inclusion, which often extends into disaster management and recovery.

Amin says that during climate-related emergencies, many people become concerned with saving themselves.  

“They [people with disabilities] might be forgotten, it might not be possible to carry them to a cyclone shelter, which could be 3 to 5 kilometers [2 to 3 miles] away from their homes.”

Nur Nobi, who is blind, always assumed his family would guide him to safety during such an emergency. But during a cyclone evacuation several years ago, he suddenly found himself alone.  

"They left through the back door and forgot about me.”

“I was in the front room of my house while my wife and children were preparing to evacuate to a cyclone shelter,” the 51-year-old said. “But, they left through the back door and forgot about me.”

During a cyclone evacuation, Nur Nobi’s family forgot about him as they fled to a storm shelter.

Credit:

Kazi Riasat Alve/The World

He said it was too dangerous for him to evacuate to a cyclone shelter on his own due to the high winds blowing around debris and powerlines. 

Nobi asked a neighbor to help locate his family. Later, one of his daughters returned home and brought him to the shelter.  

Nobi, who heads a disability advocacy group in the rural Sitakund district, said that despite the risks, relocation to a city is not possible for many people with disabilities. There aren’t many job opportunities and physically getting around a small town can be easier, he said.

Nobi said there are measures the government could take that would make it safer for people with disabilities during a climate-related disaster.  

“There should be sign language interpreters to assist deaf people during evacuations,” Nobi said. “And people with a disability should be prioritized for evacuations ahead of a cyclone, and officials should take them to a shelter.”   

Selina Akter, the mother of two severely disabled children in the village of Mirsharai, said that emergency transportation could alleviate the burden of having to make a difficult decision should they need to evacuate. 

 “Which child should I carry, this one or that one?”

“What else can I do, can I evacuate both of my children together by myself?” Akter said. “Which child should I carry, this one or that one?”

 Selina Akter doesn’t know how she’d be able to protect her two disabled children if a cyclone strikes her village.

Credit:

 Kazi Riasat Alve/The World

She said that if they had to evacuate the village while her husband was away, she doesn't know how they would survive.  

“If Allah [God] allows, I’ll be able to evacuate my two children, otherwise I’ll die here,” she said. 

Akter said she is unaware of any assistance for people with disabilities during emergencies.

Bangladesh’s national disaster management protocol and other laws are, in fact, “highly disability inclusive,” said Vashkar Bhattacharjee, a Chattogram-based disability rights advocate.

The problem, he said,  is at the “implementation level.”

Disability inclusion is “on the agenda of the Bangladesh government,” he said, but added that these provisions are mainly just “on paper.”

Bhattacharjee, who is blind and advises the government on accessibility, said the effects of climate change on people with disabilities is still largely misunderstood by policymakers in Bangladesh.

<img class="media-element file-browser-width" data-delta="4" typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://media.pri.org/s3fs-public/styles/w2304/public/images/2024/01/2024-01-09-vashkar-bhattacharjee.jpg?itok=BgrpYSby" width="2304" height="1538" alt="Vashkar Bhattacharjee says more research is needed to better underst

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