Railway communication between Dhaka and the three divisions of Rajshahi, Khulna and Rangpur resumed yesterday after the repair of the Pouli rail bridge in Tangail. The bridge was damaged after a large chunk of soil beneath the bridge was washed away by floodwaters.

Meanwhile, the flood situation is continuing to improve in the northern districts, including Lalmonirhat, Kurigram, Gaibandha, Dinajpur, Rangpur, Bogra, and Sirajganj.

The flood situation is also improving in the country’s central regions, including Faridpur, Rajbari, Munshiganj and Shariatpur. Sub-divisional engineer of the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB), Sardar Udoy Rayhan, said the flood situation had improved in the northern districts, with the water level of the Brahmaputra-Jamuna declining.

The water in the Teesta-Dharal-Dudhkumar basin was also receding, leading to an improvement in the situation, he said.

According to the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre (FFWC), the water levels of different rivers had fallen at 53 points, while rising at 35 points. Water at two points remained steady but was still flowing over the danger level at 27 points.

The FFWC said the Padma was likely to continue falling in the next 48 hours and the Surma-Kushiyara was likely to keep falling in the next 24 hours.

Our Tangail correspondent reports: The railway authorities restored Dhaka’s railway links with north and south Bengal after toiling for some 34 hours.

More than 300 workers and two units of the Tangail Fire Service took part in a mammoth repair work of the Pouli Railway Bridge.

The Bridge is situated on the Dhaka-Bangabandhu Bridge railway track over the Pouli in Kalihati upazila of Tangail district. The temporary repairs were completed by Monday afternoon.

Sacks of sand were dumped to shore up the area that had collapsed. Girders have been laid. An alternative small bridge has been constructed, it was learnt. Bamboo scaffolds, too, have been erected.

Chief engineer of the western zone, Ramjan Ali, said they had tried their best, as the minister had ordered the repair of the bridge and the restoration of communication in shortest possible time ahead of Eid.

Repairs started on Sunday morning, and a trial run of a train was done at about 5pm.

The Silk City train left Dhaka for Rajshahi and was expected to cross the bridge around 6pm, the chief engineer said.

Railway Bridge No. 98 became dysfunctional when a big chunk of earth, measuring about 20 metres, collapsed near the Pouli Bridge following a rush of floodwaters.

All the scheduled trains between Dhaka and the northern and southern regions were suspended following the incident, cutting off the regions completely and immensely inconveniencing passengers.

Rail services from Dhaka to the north and south were cancelled on Sunday and the Maitri Express, which plies on the Dhaka-Kolkata route, was cancelled for two days.

Chief engineer Ramjan Ali supervised the repairing work. He said that a strong current of floodwaters had carried away the soil.

Mayor Md Safi Khan of Elenga municipality, however, claimed that the soil had been eroded as it had become loose because of illegal sand extraction and unplanned dredging.

The local people said that ruling party members, who wield a lot of clout, dug up sand from the western side of the bridge.

The reports of illegal sand collection had been earlier published in national and local dailies, including The Independent.

Tangail deputy commissioner Khan Mohammad Nurul Amin told journalists that the administration had conducted mobile courts and punished the illegal sand lifters. If illegal sand lifting was found to be the cause of erosion, those responsible would be punished after an inquiry, he added.

In Bogra, the overall flood situation marked a slight improvement in the Bogra-Jamuna basin. Flood-affected people are returning to their homes from various disaster shelters. Government and non-government relief activities have been said to be inadequate in the flood-affected area. Flood-hit people of Sariakandi, Dhunut, Sonatola, Shibganj and Nondigram upazilas in the district are undergoing immense suffering because of the acute shortage of food and relief materials. They besieged a visitor’s boat in the hope of getting relief materials.

With floodwaters receding in many areas of the district, waterborne diseases like diarrhoea and dysentery have broken out following the scarcity of safe drinking water.