Storm Toll Put at 25,000 in Bangladesh; Many Missing

As many as 25,000 people may have died in the devastating cyclone that rampaged across the southeastern coast of this impoverished nation, a news agency reported Wednesday.

United News of Bangladesh, quoting radio reports received in Dhaka, said 25,000 people died--mostly on the coastal islands of Kutubdia, Maheshkali, Sandwip and Chakori that are home to hundreds of thousands of farmers and fishermen.

The government said it knew of only about 3,000 deaths in Tuesday’s eight-hour storm but acknowledged that its reports were incomplete because of severe communications problems. Many of the affected islands were still under water.

Official reports on the number of deaths have been conservative, with much higher figures being reported in state-owned and private newspapers and news agencies.

Communications to much of the area remained cut off Wednesday, 36 hours after the storm subsided.

An official with the Red Crescent, the Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross, also said the death toll could be as high as 25,000.

Helicopter crews flying over the islands reported residents clinging to roofs of buildings and homes to escape the floodwaters. Bodies were seen floating in the ocean around one of the islands.

Navy and other rescue ships were struggling to reach islands in the Bay of Bengal, battered by 20-foot-high tidal waves driven by the cyclone’s winds.

The surge swamped about a dozen islands, and rescue officials said 20,000 people were reported missing.

Hamiduzzaman Khan, director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, described Tuesday’s storm as “the severest cyclone in 20 years.”

The cyclone, 185 miles in diameter with a core 46 miles across, carried winds of up to 146 m.p.h. when it blew in from the Bay of Bengal. Officials said its intensity surpassed that of the 1970 cyclone that hit Bangladesh with 138-m.p.h. winds and killed an estimated 300,000 people.

Bangladesh, bordered by India and Myanmar, has about 110 million people in an area smaller than Wisconsin. Three rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal through low-lying deltas, making it prone to storms and floods that take a huge toll on the country, one of the world’s poorest.

Calling for foreign aid, Prime Minister Khaleda Zia said: “The magnitude of devastation wrought by the latest cyclone is so enormous that Bangladesh cannot face it alone.”

U.S. Ambassador William Milam gave medical supplies worth $2 million Tuesday. Supplies worth $20 million will reach Chittagong by ship in a few days, he said. Chittagong is in the area hit by the storm.

The government began an operation to provide essentials to the millions of survivors, officials said. At least 12 helicopters dispatched from Dhaka flew in and out of the affected area, dropping packets of food, bottles of water and clothing, they said.

Relief Secretary Hashimuddin Ahmed said at least 10 million people, about one-tenth the country’s population, lived in the area that bore the brunt of the storm. Many of them were made homeless, their mud and straw huts blown away by winds, he said.

Ahmed said Bangladesh’s salt-manufacturing industry and shrimp farms were almost totally devastated.

United News said that about 8,000 people died in Kutubdia, an island off Cox’s Bazar, a seaside resort in the south near the border with Myanmar. Another 70,000 people on the island were missing, it said.

At least 7,000 people died on Maheshkali, an island south of Kutubdia, it said. And at least 5,000 died on Sandwip, a tear-shaped island near Chittagong, Bangladesh’s second-largest city, it said.

On many islands, the swift evacuation of people to cyclone shelters and a bit of good luck saved thousands of lives.

On Manpura, an island off the ragged southern coastline 108 miles from Dhaka, cyclone warnings were sounded over megaphones and by beating drums.

Hours before the cyclone hit, 20,000 of the island’s 50,000 people took refuge in stone shelters erected on earthen platforms after a cyclone in 1985 that claimed 10,000 lives.

“When the storm came in darkness I thought I’ll never see a day again. Death was so near, but somehow I survived,” said Mohammed Kamaluddin, 13, a villager.

The storm peaked during low tide, and favorable winds from the northeast blocked the buildup of even higher tidal waves.

“There was no tidal surge or inundation. Allah saved us,” said Ibrahim Khalil, an 82-year-old farmer who survived the terrible 1970 and 1985 cyclones.

Despite the megaphone and drum warnings, some Manpura residents did not leave their homes until it was too late.

“I moved out of my home in the evening. But high winds threw my 5-year-old son miles away and next day I found his body in a pond,” said Bibi Aimuna, a 35-year-old widow.

After the 1985 disaster, islanders built a five-mile-long flood embankment. Still, nearly half of the island’s 8,000 houses, schools and some mosques were destroyed in Tuesday’s storm, said a local administration official.

Chittagong, Bangladesh’s commercial center, was awash under several feet of seawater that did heavy damage to its industrial zone.

On Tuesday, photographers in official helicopters saw air force jets at Chittagong airport in mud and water halfway up to their wings. Thousands of people were seen on rooftops.

Helicopters were unable to land at any airport in the area until the waters began receding.

BACKGROUND

A terrifying force of nature, a cyclone may develop winds of up to 150 m.p.h. and devastate an area several hundred miles wide. While called a cyclone in the Indian Ocean, it is the same as the typhoon in the western Pacific and the more-familiar hurricane in the Atlantic and Caribbean. A violent and destructive rush of ocean water, known as a storm surge, often accompanies a cyclone as it moves onto land.