United News of Bangladesh

An early wave of flash floods, triggered by upstream hill runoff and days of relentless rain, has inundated vast stretches of haor land in Chhatak upazila of Sunamganj, leaving thousands of farmers staring at devastating crop losses. Within hours of heavy rainfall from Saturday morning, water levels rose sharply across the low-lying wetlands, submerging ripened boro paddy—the region’s primary and often only annual crop. The sudden flood has turned once-golden fields into an endless expanse of water,said farmers. Villages under Chormohalla union—including Buraigiri, Boroghatti, Bagachhara, Gojahati, Baruka and Ura beel—are now largely underwater. The situation worsened dramatically after a key embankment at Khaner Badh in Boroghatti beel collapsed, sending torrents of water rushing into nearby fields and submerging nearly 400 acres of mature paddy in a short span. “I watched my paddy go under water right before my eyes,” said Abdus Sobhan, a farmer from Buraigiri, holding a handful of soaked rice stalks. “This boro crop was our only hope for the year. Now there won’t even be enough rice to feed my family.” Abul Kalam, a farmer from Srinagar village, said his 17 bighas of land—along with nearly 200 bighas in his village—have been completely submerged. “It breaks my heart. I don’t know how we will survive this,” he said. Similar scenes have been reported from multiple haors across unions such as Kalaruka, Uttar Khurma, and Dakshin Khurma. Areas including Jhawar beel, Borobara, Puraidubi, Banderlama, Bhathgaon, Jauabazar, and Singchapair are all grappling with the same crisis. Many farmers said the rapid rise in water left them with no time to harvest their crops. Official estimates from the upazila agriculture office state that a total of 14,996 hectares were cultivated with boro this season—3,382 hectares in haor areas and 11,614 hectares in non-haor lands. As of May 1, officials said 2,513 hectares in haor areas and 3,833 hectares in non-haor areas have already been harvested. However, farmers on the ground contest these figures, alleging that the official data does not reflect the scale of devastation. “Large parts of Chormohalla and surrounding areas are now under water. Thousands of hectares of ripe paddy have been lost,” said Advocate Abdul Ahad, a local resident and additional public prosecutor at the Sunamganj Judge Court. “The government estimates are far from the reality.” Farmers also blamed poor water management for aggravating the disaster. They alleged that inadequate drainage systems, silted canals, absence of functional sluice gates, and weak embankments have made the haor areas highly vulnerable. “Even if the rain stops, the water has nowhere to go,” said a farmer in Boroghatti. “On one side there is hill runoff, and on the other, broken embankments—our crops are trapped in between.” The crisis has been compounded by an acute shortage of agricultural labourers during the peak harvesting season, said farmers. With fewer seasonal workers arriving this year, many farmers took to the fields themselves. But rising water levels and strong currents have made it nearly impossible to salvage the submerged crops. As the waters continue to rise, uncertainty looms large over the livelihoods of thousands of farming families in Chhatak’s haor belt, where a single crop failure can push households into prolonged financial distress.