Dense fog disrupts life

Thousands of travellers yesterday were stranded because of heavy fog that disrupted ship and ferry movement, train trips and flights across the country.
The dense fog may continue till Thursday or Friday, said Abdur Rahman, duty forecasting officer of the meteorological department in Chittagong.
Shahjalal International Airport in Sylhet is already facing time constraints, operating flights 15 hours a day, as its only runway gets a fresh coat of tarmac. The thick fog is now cutting down on the 15-hour time frame.
Seven Dhaka-bound international flights, including two of the state-run Biman Bangladesh Airlines, were supposed to have landed at the Shahjalal airport. But due to dense fog there, they had to land at Shah Amanat International Airport in Chittagong, causing suffering to the passengers.
Mohammad Hasnat, a student of Daffodil University in the capital, said his flight from Kuala Lumpur was scheduled to land at the Shahjalal airport at 9:00pm on Sunday. But the flight was diverted to Chittagong, from where he had to board another flight and finally reached the Shahjalal airport at 1:00pm yesterday.

Ship movement to and from the Chittagong port was hampered as thick fog shrouded the whole area.
A total of six ships scheduled to berth at different jetties of the port in the morning had to sit at the outer anchorage in the Bay for poor visibility caused by heavy fog, said sources in the port's radio control room.
A total of 40 launches usually report at Sadarghat launch terminal in Dhaka by 8:30am daily. But only six reported till 12:30pm yesterday, Arif Uddin, deputy secretary of Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA), told The Daily Star.
The thick fog halted ferry services on the Mawa-Kawrakandi route for 11 hours and on the Paturia-Daulatdia route for 12 hours, leaving around 900 vehicles and thousands of commuters stranded on the river banks.
The ferry services resumed around 10:00am as the fog gradually cleared with the morning sunshine, said Sirajul Islam, manager of the BIWTA Mawa office in Munshiganj.
Ferry services on the southern routes like Barisal-Bhola, Barisal-Kuakata also remained suspended for about 12 hours till yesterday morning.
Sources at the Chittagong railway station said all the trains left the station on time. But they reached the destinations much later than scheduled as they had to run slowly due to the fog.
(Our correspondents from Chittagong, Barisal and Munshiganj contributed to this report.)