Fulmati loses her home to river erosion for the sixth time
Fulmati Sardar, 70, sat on the broken embankment, sorting through clothes she had pulled from the wreckage of her home. Each piece was a small decision about what to carry to a place she did not yet have.
“Our house has been washed away at least five times. Each time, we moved to another place and built a new house. This is the sixth,” she said.
On Sunday morning, October 11, this correspondent saw around 45 metres of a newly built Water Development Board (WDB) embankment collapse during high tide along the Dhaki river in Botbunia village of Khulna’s Dacope upazila. The damaged section is part of an ongoing project.
Tidal water rushed into the area, and at least 13 families lost their homes.
The damaged portion had been built after erosion struck the same spot last October. It did not survive a year.
Fulmati’s home in Uttar Kaminibasia Sardar Bari, Tiladanga union, lost one of its two rooms to the river. Her husband, Jadubar Sardar, 75, is almost immobile, and she can barely move herself. Their only daughter is married and lives elsewhere.
As workers tried to repair the breach, Fulmati pleaded with them for time to retrieve what she could.
“We once had a homestead on three bighas of land. The river swallowed it all,” she said. “Now I have nowhere to go. I cannot go to my daughter’s house either. I am thinking of putting up a small shelter beside this road.”
After last year’s erosion, she received Tk 15,000 and some household items from the government, which was not enough to rebuild.
“We borrowed money to build this house. Now the river has taken that away too,” she said.
A few steps away, Niranjan Kumar Mondal, 77, watched helplessly as his wife, Rina Rani, dragged their belongings from their damaged home to the road. The couple have no children. Niranjan has been unable to walk since a hospital stay a few months ago, and can no longer work as a mason.
“I do not know how we will eat or where we will go,” he said.
“A man from a neighbouring village gave us food yesterday. We ate that this morning. The river has destroyed my life.”
The collapse happened near Botbunia Bazar, in polder 31, which covers Panikhali and Tiladanga unions and Chalna municipality, home to around 95,000 people.
Local resident Subodh Sarkar said erosion began at the spot last October, after which the WDB contracted local contractorsto build a 350-metre raised embankment. In 2024, a breach at the same location flooded paddy fields and damaged crops.
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The embankment is part of a 1,750-metre project costing Tk 24 crore, which began in 2023 and is due to finish in July 2027, Subodh said.
Md Nayan Ali, a WDB sub-divisional engineer, said about 1.5-kilometre areas around Botbunia Bazar is highly vulnerable to erosion.
“We have been carrying out repair work here for the past three years. The work is still ongoing,” he said.
A local supervisor of the contractor, who asked not to be named, said Botbunia lies where the Dhaki meets the Pasur, with the Shibsa on its eastern side. The Shibsa’s powerful tide strikes the spot directly, he said, and the embankment gave way to a sudden surge despite the workers’ efforts.
Rashedur Rahman, executive engineer of WDB Division-2 in Khulna, said the contractor had been instructed to take all necessary measures to stop further flooding.
“We hope to construct an alternative embankment as soon as possible,” he said. Asked about the project’s cost estimate, he said he had recently joined and would need time to check the files.
Villagers have joined WDB workers in blocking the breach with sandbags to protect their homes and fields from the rising tide.
Moreover, locals fear that water entering through the breach could damage around 4,000 hectares of standing Aman paddy and fish enclosures, dealing a further blow to farmers’ livelihoods.
Dacope Upazila Nirbahi Officer Md Burhan Uddin Mithu told The Daily Star that affected families had received cash assistance and rice. Upazila administration sources said displaced families were sheltering in neighbours’ homes.
“We have instructed WDB officials to take urgent steps to prevent further erosion. We hope the repair work will be completed within the next two days,” he said.