Fog disrupts ferry services, vehicular movement
Dense fog disrupted ferry services and vehicular movement on different routes for several hours on Friday night and yesterday, causing untold sufferings to passengers.
Two flights of Biman Bangladesh Airlines were also delayed yesterday due to poor visibility.
Ferry service on Shimulia-Kawrakandi route remained suspended for over 11 hours from 11:00pm Friday, reports our Munshiganj correspondent.
Six ferries with around 500 passengers got stranded in mid-river due to dense fog. Besides, queues of over 800 vehicles were seen on both sides of the Padma river.
Ferry service on Paturia-Daulatdia route was suspended for seven hours from 1:30am yesterday.
Passengers, especially children and elderly people, suffered a lot in the cold and due to a lack of toilet facilities and food, reports our Manikganj correspondent.
Around 350 vehicles, including buses, were seen lined up at Paturia in Manikganj and 300 vehicles at Daulatdia ferry terminal in Rajbari.
The ferry service resumed around 8:45am.
Vehicular movement on the Bangabandhu Bridge was suspended for two hours from 5:30am yesterday, which caused long queues of vehicles on both ends of the bridge, reports our Tangail correspondent, quoting police.
In the early morning of January 2, a truck helper was killed and five others were injured in a five-vehicle pile-up on the bridge due to poor visibility.
Meanwhile, a Saudi Arabia-bound and a Kuwait-bound flight of Biman, scheduled for yesterday morning, were delayed for 24 hours due to dense fog, Biman officials told The Daily Star.
3 BODIES RECOVERED IN PADMA
Police and divers of fire service yesterday recovered bodies of two youths and a woman who went missing after a head-on collision between two speedboats in poor visibility on Shimulia-Kawrakandi route Friday morning.
Identities of the dead could not be known as of filing of this report at 9:00pm yesterday.
Search for four other missing people, including two women, was on, police said.
TEMPERATURE LIKELY TO FALL
The Meteorology department has forecast a drop in temperature in the country from January 12.
Winter has been rather warm, especially in the capital, in December and in the first week of January.
The lowest temperatures in parts of Rangpur and Rajshahi divisions and Jessore and Chuadanga might range between 10 and 6 degree Celsius then, which hovered between 12 and 8 degree Celsius in the areas yesterday.
“A mild cold wave will sweep over these areas from January 12,” Omar Faruk, a meteorologist at the Bangladesh Metrological Department, told The Daily Star by phone yesterday.
Such cold waves would surely have its effect on the capital that might experience mercury going down by a degree. The maximum temperature in Dhaka yesterday was 26.6 degree Celsius and the minimum was 14 degree Celsius, according to Met office.
Yesterday, the lowest temperature of 8.1 degree Celsius was recorded in Tentulia of Panchagarh, while the highest temperature was 28 degree Celsius in Teknaf of Cox's Bazar.
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