When heavy floods started flooding her riverside home last week in the village of Madarganj in northern Bangladesh, Habiba Begum decided to stay with her family instead of moving to a shelter.
Desperate to save what little possessions they had, Begum’s family chained their only suitcase to their home, a makeshift structure made of bamboo and banana leaves built after the last devastating flood in the area just two years ago.
When the waters rose, the house was isolated in murky waters, and the family had to cook in an elevated area of nearby dry land.
Then tragedy struck. Begum left her 1-year-old daughter, Lamia Khatun, on higher ground while washing clothes in flood waters on Tuesday. But the waters kept rising.
“When I came back, she was gone,” said Begum, 32. “We found her body hours later.”
Across South Asia, more than four million people have been hit by monsoon floods that destroyed houses and structures, drowned entire villages, and forced people to duck on rooftops in hopes of being rescued.
The monsoon season, generally from June to September, brings a torrent of heavy rain, a deluge that is crucial to the agrarian economy of South Asia.
But in recent years, the monsoon season has brought more and more devastating cyclones and floods, causing the internal displacement of millions of people in low-lying areas, particularly in Bangladesh.
Last year, at least 600 people died and more than 25 million were affected by flooding due to torrential monsoon rains in Bangladesh, India, Myanmar and Nepal, according to the United Nations. And in 2017, more than 1,000 people died in floods across South Asia.
Precipitation has been heaviest this year in northeast India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and Nepal, according to the United Nations-affiliated Flash Southeast Asia Flash Flood Forecasting System.
Bangladeshi authorities say the floods started in late June, floods are expected to continue this month and more areas will be affected.
Enamur Rahman, Bangladesh’s disaster management minister, said the floods were the worst in decades and that hundreds of thousands of families had been cut off, forcing authorities to open more than 1,000 emergency shelters.
“We are fighting the catastrophe with all possible resources available,” said Rahman. “It seems that the rains and floods will continue this year.”
Researchers have warned that in a few decades, Bangladesh, with a population of more than 160 million people, may lose more than 10 percent of its land to rising sea levels, caused by warmer weather, displacing up to 18 million.
India has also suffered immensely. Floods have spread across the states of Assam, Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal and other areas in the eastern part of the country. The country’s authorities have said that at least 85 people have died, with more than three million affected by the flood.
In the northeastern state of Assam, Kaziranga National Park, a World Heritage site that houses the Indian one-horned rhino, a species classified as vulnerable by the WWF, has been completely flooded. Authorities said more than 50 animals had died in the floods, although some wild animals had been rescued.
With more than a dozen rivers and tributaries growing above the danger mark, rescue operations have been carried out in at least 22 districts of Assam.
In Nepal, 67 people have died and another 40 are missing, according to the National Center for Emergency Operations.
That adds to the monsoons that have hit Bangladesh. Low and densely populated, with 165 million people, the country is devastated by floods.
In Jamalpur in the north, the flood situation has become critical, with rivers flowing well above the danger level. Muneeb-ul-Islam, 42, who lives in the area with his wife and three children, said he had lost his home several times in 10 years, leaving him alone with the clothes he was wearing.
Mr. ul-Islam and his family are among the more than one million people in Bangladesh who were displaced or homeless by the floods.
“It is as if we have committed some sin,” said Mr. ul-Islam. “This is the third time in recent years that we will have to rebuild our lives from scratch.”
Begum, who lost her 1-year-old son, said her life had been completely destroyed. Now she has moved to a nearby shelter, a school building, where hundreds of people were crowded. The fear that the coronavirus will spread in such narrow rooms becomes great. Ms. Begum’s family said there were not enough warnings about the extent of the floods.
“I will never go back to where we used to live,” he said, “the water has taken everything from us.”
