New Storms Slow Aid to Bangladesh : Disasters: An estimated 10 million are left homeless by the cyclone. With the death toll at 99,250, relief efforts are hampered by fierce winds and rain.

Fierce new storms battered this stricken country Friday as the official death toll of the most savage cyclone in decades climbed to nearly 100,000, with tens of thousands of people still unaccounted for and feared drowned.

High winds and rain further slowed emergency relief efforts already severely hampered by poor organization and communication, and a shortage of helicopters, planes and boats to reach survivors still stranded on rooftops or huddled in remote villages.

Outbreaks of cholera, dysentery and other communicable diseases are widely feared, with millions unable to obtain clean drinking water, food or medicine. The government estimates that 10 million people were made homeless by the deadly storm and tidal surge.

Relief workers and journalists who visited the worst-hit coastal areas of southeastern Bangladesh, where the cyclone slammed ashore early Tuesday with winds of 145 m.p.h. and 18-foot-high waves, described scenes of utter devastation.

“It’s as though the whole country was a sandcastle and a huge wave just washed it away,” said Marcy Vigoda, an aid worker for CARE. “Whole villages are gone. Bridges are wiped out. Bodies are everywhere.

“Islands that used to be inhabited now are devoid of life,” she added after her return from the southern Chittagong district. “They’re just under water.”

The Red Crescent, the Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross, said the death count from the storm stood at 99,256. About 60,000 people were killed around Chittagong, the second-largest city and major port, Communications Minister Oli Ahmed told Dhaka’s Cyclone Preparedness Center. A towering tidal wave struck the port area, sinking dozens of boats and barges, overturning trucks and flooding nearby garment factories and buildings.

As floodwaters began to recede, two Soviet-built AN-32 transport planes landed at Chittagong airport for the first time Friday. A young boy’s body, bloated and blue, lay in the departure lounge. Nearby, an enormous river dredge had been washed ashore, blocking the road. Electricity and telephone lines dangled from broken poles.

Each of the relief planes can carry only six tons of supplies. The planes made two trips each, delivering 24 tons of brown sugar, rice biscuits, water purification tablets and 2-gallon plastic containers of water.

Two helicopters then attempted to airlift the supplies to nearby islands and villages. Many of the water canisters burst on impact when dropped from the choppers, however, as barefoot and bedraggled survivors shouted and frantically waved below. Others fought for the supplies.

“There is absolutely no organization down there,” said a journalist on the flight.

The Chittagong military commander, Maj. Gen. Mahmudul Hasan, said food was dropped on Katubdia and Bashkhali, two of the worst-hit areas, “but it was a drop in the ocean.”

“I can’t go there without adequate relief,” he told reporters. “Otherwise, I’m afraid we’ll be eaten up by the hungry people.”

Four Bangladesh navy ships carried 70 tons of bread, matches, tents and other relief supplies to isolated islands, the government said. Blankets, plastic sheeting and other supplies also were released from government warehouses specially built in vulnerable coastal areas.

Much of the country is still inaccessible, however, with floodwaters covering roads and fields. In some areas, decomposing bodies floated amid broken trees and shattered buildings. Countless mud-and-straw huts were simply washed away or lay roofless under menacing gray skies.

One man, Abdul Mannan, survived by clinging to a banana tree as it floated 40 miles down the raging Feni River. His wife and five children were drowned. “About 500 families of my village met the same fate,” he told a local reporter.

Geography has made Bangladesh disaster-prone, but the effects are magnified by the country’s desperate poverty. About 110 million people are crammed into an area the size of Wisconsin, and many struggle on the edge of starvation even in the best of times.

The country is mostly a giant river delta, barely above sea level, lying at the head of a natural funnel formed by the Bay of Bengal. Six major cyclones have lashed the country in the last three decades, with the century’s deadliest storm killing an estimated 300,000 people in November, 1970.

Diplomats said that Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s fragile six-week-old government was doing as well as could be expected, given the country’s scant resources and infrastructure.

“At the government level, it’s hard to say what they’ve done so far,” one diplomat said. “Locally, the potential to provide relief is very limited.”

Zia insisted that the death toll would have been far worse than that of the 1970 storm if the government’s Cyclone Preparedness Center had not tracked the storm and given two days of warning as the winds picked up strength and approached the densely crowded coast.

Thousands of volunteers used bullhorns, drums and radios to warn villagers to evacuate to recently built cyclone centers. Only 63 shelters exist, however, and little progress has been made with long-term measures, such as raising the mouths of wells to prevent contamination by seawater.

Lutfur Rahman Khan, the state minister for relief, said the storm caused at least $1.4 billion in damage to homes, infrastructure and crops, devastating the districts of Cox’s Bazar, Sandwip, Maheshkali, Chittagong, Bhola and Patuakhali.

With daily government appeals for international aid, state-run radio said that India was sending three helicopters. Another three were expected from Pakistan. Saudi Arabia has sent three transport jets with supplies.

The United States, France, China, Britain and Japan have also sent or promised assistance. Nobel Laureate Mother Teresa was expected to arrive in Dhaka today from her base in Calcutta, according to state-run television.

The United Nations, International Red Cross, U.S.-based CARE, British-based Oxfam, local Red Crescent Society and other relief groups scrambled to distribute emergency supplies.

CARE used trucks and trawlers Friday morning to ship food, water, oral rehydration kits, plastic sheeting and other supplies to the low-lying island of Hatiya, where an estimated 12,000 people died and 20,000 are homeless, aid worker Vigoda said. Sixteen medical teams were sent to the Chittagong district.

“We’re hearing of cholera, dysentery and diarrhea,” Vigoda said.

The government declared today an official day of mourning, ordering flags flown at half staff and special prayers in mosques around the country.