The continuous torrential rains that started on July have inundated Chattogram and the southeastern districts. The heavy, relentless monsoon downpours not only caused widespread floods but also landslides in the hills causing some 29 fatalities of which 14 happened to be children. Reports further say that, 19 of the landslide-related deaths were reported from Cox's Bazar, while the rest were from Bandarban (5), Chattogram (4) and Rangamati (1) respectively. Of the Cox's Bazar victims, 13 were reportedly residents of Rohingya camps. The government and its disaster management wings say, there were forecasts and warnings from Met office about the impending dangers. There were also efforts by the administration to relocate the Rohingya people after the dangers of the rains and the landslides struck.
The Met office had issued several rounds of 'heavy rainfall beginning warnings' on July 5, which detailed that heavy to very heavy rainfall would cause severe waterlogging as well as flash floods across the region. At the same time, the Met office warnings also told the public and the government about the high risk of landslides to the hilly areas. So, why did these avoidable deaths caused by landslides in the hills happened all the same?
Experts are of the view that the only sustainable solution to the recurring landslide disasters in southeastern Bangladesh is to shift from reactive emergency responses to proactive, year-round management. This requires strict enforcement against illegal hill cutting, permanent relocation of vulnerable settlements, comprehensive watershed restoration, and institutionalising localised early warning systems. In this connection, watershed restoration in the hilly areas of Chattogram (Chittagong Hill Tracts) is about a holistic approach to healing degraded ecosystems by managing land, water and vegetation. It focuses on controlling severe soil erosion, preserving freshwater springs (like Village Common Forests), and shifting to sustainable agriculture to protect local communities from natural disaster. Notably, simply evicting people during heavy rains is a temporary, unsustainable fix. Experts advocate identifying high-risk slopes and permanently relocating vulnerable foothill populations-including the massive refugee camps in Cox's Bazar-to safe, properly planned rehabilitation areas. Destructive practices like hill cutting, deforestation, and commercial stone extraction fundamentally alter the geological stability of the Chattogram Hill Tracts (CHT). In fact, hill-cutting in Chattogram began in 1760 with the arrival of the East India Company. The British cleared vegetation and sliced hills for administrative and residential building construction. After the 1971 liberation war, explosive population growth and rapid commercialisation led to massive, illegal razing of hills for housing projects.
The geological destabilisation of Chattogram and the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is a direct consequence of this practice. Hills in the region consist primarily of loosely consolidated tertiary sandy and silty clay soils. Cutting hillsides at sheer, unnatural angles (70-80 degrees) removes their natural gravity-based support, making them highly susceptible to sudden collapse. Hill-cutting destroys the vegetation cover. Tree and shrub roots act as critical natural anchors and absorb excess moisture. Without them, the topsoil becomes severely weakened. Removing the top layer of compacted soil and changing the natural topography drastically alters how water flows during heavy downpours. Rainfall that used to be absorbed now acts as heavy surface runoff, washing away vulnerable, cut hillsides. The combination of weakened, steep, and unanchored slopes with prolonged, heavy monsoon rain transforms cut hillsides into deadly mudslides. Influential land grabbers and real estate developers frequently flatten hills-destroying more than 60 percent of the Chattogram City's historic hills-leaving the low-income residents who inhabit the precarious slopes highly vulnerable to recurring fatal landslides. According to UN Refugee Agency UNHCR, 95 landslides occurred in the Rohingya camps between July 4 and July 9 when there was heavy uninterrupted rainfalls. That left more than 4,300 Rohingya people homeless while at the same time affected more than 26,000 Rohingya refugees in different ways. According to reports, between 100,000 and 150,000 people live in high-risk areas. But the authorities have reportedly managed to relocate 15,000 to 20,000 people. But crisis-time displacement of the people when disastrous landslides strike has not resolved the issue of loss of lives and helplessness of the people who established those settlements on the hillsides. According to the data reportedly provided by the district administration, in 2014, some 666 families were precariously living on 11 hill slopes in the Chattogram city. But recently that number has increased about tenfold to 6,555 families across 26 hills in the city in about 10 years. Again, this statistics is still 3 years old. In that case, it is believed that the number of such illegal and dangerous settlements on the hills has increased further during the intervening years. Going into history, following the catastrophic landslide of June 11, 2007, that took 127 lives, an investigation committee, as is the usual practice, was formed, which came up with recommendations that included some long-term measures. The common recommendations included relocation and rehabilitation of vulnerable citizens, stopping of hill-cutting, preventing new settlements on the hill slopes, reforestation of the denuded hills and ensuring accountability of government agencies that own the hill lands. A series of landslides again occurred across the southeastern districts including Chattogram, Bandarban and Rangamati that claimed 168 lives in June, 2017. Again, there was a probe body which as expected produced a large number of recommendations as before. But no tangible results flowed from those probe committees and their suggestion. Small wonder that less than a decade later we are witnessing similar disasters across the districts of greater Chattogram.
Against this backdrop, there has been a consistent call from concerned quarters for a unified National Hill Management Policy and strict, year-round enforcement to hold illegal developers publicly accountable. Environmentally, engineering solutions like retaining walls often fail. Sustainable slope protection involves planting native, deep-rooted vegetation and ridge-to-valley watershed restoration programmes that allow natural soil binding and water management. Anticipatory action saves lives. This must be paired with trusted, disability-inclusive, and gender-sensitive cyclone and landslide shelters that local communities can reach in time. In this connection, experts recommend using unambiguous, colour-coded forecasts sent via targeted mobile alerts and alternative networks such as HAM radios. It would be worthwhile to note that HAM radio is actually amateur, but popular public service that uses radios, antennas and licensed frequencies to communicate across towns, around the world. Operators use it for off-grid communication, providing emergency backups when cell and internet networks fail. However, all these answers to Chattogram landslides on hills with their attendant deaths and destruction have so far remained basically paperwork.
The permanent answer is a comprehensive strategy combining controlled urban planning, nature-based slope stabilisation, and proactive community rehabilitation. Because heavy monsoons and fragile soil will always exist, eliminating the death toll requires ending the seasonal cycle of illegal settlements and hill-cutting before the rains begin. There should be a permanent stop to indiscriminate hill-cutting for commercial development and strict penalties for hill land grabbers should be enforced. Any future construction in high-risk zones using updated topographic mapping and geological surveys should also be banned.
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