Floods force 20,000 people from homes in Myanmar’s Bago

Flooding triggered by torrential downpours has forced about 20,000 people from their homes in the Myanmar city of Bago and they now face a dire shortage of water and food with more rain expected, aid workers and residents said on Monday.

A child was swept away and drowned near Bago, which is famous for its Buddhist temples, about 80 km (50 miles) north of the former capital of Yangon, after days of relentless rain, residents said.

The flooding has compounded misery for many people struggling to get by in an economic crisis in the wake of a 2021 military coup that plunged the country into bloody turmoil.

“The flood hasn’t subsided. I don’t know how to express the hardships, the flooding amidst the political crisis. We’re facing shortages of food and medicine,” a Bago resident, who declined to be identified for fear of reprisals for talking to the media, told Radio Free Asia.

Aid groups said 20,000 people have been forced from their homes since Friday, with residents of the Ah Htet Zaing Ga Naing Gyi, Kyun Tharyar, Kyauk Gyi Su and Pon Nar Su neighborhoods particularly hard hit.

“Those neighborhoods are flooded up to the height of bamboo,” said an official with a Bago-based social aid group, who also declined to be identified.

“There’s an urgent need for clean drinking water and food for the evacuees,” said the official, adding that some people who had sought shelter in a relief camp were forced to move again when the waters kept rising.

The junta that seized power in 2021 said in a notice in the state-owned Myanmar Alin newspaper that 27 flood relief camps had been opened and military authorities in Bago had helped 18,210 people evacuate and were providing assistance to them.

A child from a family already displaced by fighting was killed in the town of Mone, to the north of Bago, when fast-flowing flood waters washed away a river bank, residents said.

“They were fleeing the war and were sheltering in the forest when the child was washed away. The body was found near Kyaung Su village,” said the first Bago resident.

Meteorological officials said early on Monday that the flood waters in Bago could rise by another six inches over the next day and would remain above the danger level for some time. 

To the east of Bago, the Sittaung River, one of the main rivers flowing south through central Myanmar to the ocean, had overflowed and flooded communities along its banks, residents of the area said.

Even further to the east, flooding in Myawaddy township on the border with Thailand killed three people – a child and two men – on Saturday when a border river burst its banks, residents said.

Flooding in northern Myanmar’s Kachin state displaced thousands of people early this month.

The military council’s Meteorological Department and the Hydrological Directorate announced on Sunday that 12 cities across Myanmar faced flooding. 

Editing by RFA staff.