20,000 deaths feared from monster waves

Press, 29 May 1985, Page 10

20,000 deaths feared from monster waves

NZPA-AP Dhaka The death toll in the worst typhoon to hit Bangladesh in 15 years could surpass 20,000, according to latest reports. Officials at the cyclone control room at the Chief Martial Law Administrator’s office in Dhaka, the capital, have put the toll at 1302.

The Red Cross in Geneva said yesterday that its workers reported a figure of 3000 confirmed bodies. The United News of India reported from Dhaka that 25,000 were dead and 30,000 missing. The nation’s other news agency, the Press Trust of India, said more than 20,000 were believed to have perished and 40,000 were unaccounted for. About 250,000 lost their homes.

Yesterday floods caused by the cyclone sent 200,000 fleeing in eastern Bangladesh. The new disaster struck the districts of Sylhet and Comilla, about 100 km from Dhaka.

Officials said that bridges were washed away and rivers overflowed, spilling across fields and villages. The typhoon swept in from the Bay of Bengal at the week-end and pounded the 96km southern coastal belt with winds of up to 160 km an hour.

The storm spawned tidal waves of up to 4.5 metres which virtually washed away entire populations of the chain of tiny offshore islands.

“The devastation in the area is beyond description,” P.T.I. quoted the President, Lieutenant-General Hossain Muhammad Ershad, as saying after visiting Sandwip Island, just west of the port city of Chittagong. General Ershad ordered national mourning for the storm victims, with the national flag flown at halfstaff and prayers at all places of worship. He postponed a scheduled trip to China to fly to the stricken areas, and ordered Air Force helicopters and four Navy ships to join Army rescue and relief teams.

“Several islands have become completely denuded of people, of houses, of cattle, of dwellings,” said George Reid, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross. Red Cross officials were reporting “cadavers of people in the sea, cadavers of animals in the sea, the crops completely destroyed, washed out, several islands completely covered in water,” he said.

The workers reported that the “entire population of three islands was washed away,” but Mr Reid did not have a figure for the number of residents.

Among the worst hit was the 26sq km island of Urirchar, which was turned into a mass graveyard. Reporters who visited the island on Monday found islanders crouched under broken bamboo roofs, their crops destroyed, their clothes tattered and their faces pale with fear and hunger. “Today even God must be crying over the tragedy,” said Abdul Khair, aged 65, a cattle farmer whose house, wife and 6 other relatives were washed away. Abdul Khair, sitting on a raised piece of ground where his bamboo dwelling used to stand, broke into uncontrollable sobs when he recounted the loss of seven of his 14 live-in relatives, including his wife. Looking to the sky, he said, “Ask him (God) what he has done.” Momina Khatun, aged 35, a housewife, who lost her three daughters and a son, said the only survivors were those who took shelter in the Forest Department office and the island’s only brick house, or latched on to mangrove bushes. A Urirchar official said it would be virtually impossible for any of those washed away to survive in the rough waters of the Bay of Bengal. Many of the survivors developed cracks in their skin from being soaked in salt water for hours and then exposed to the scorching sun. They were also threatened by a scarcity of drinking water.

Officials in Maijdi Court, administrative headquarters of the southern Noakhali district, said more than 1000 people were rescued from the sea by Army, Air Force and Navy teams. Bodies of the dead were being plucked from the ocean and its tributaries. Emergency food supplies were dropped by air and delivered by boat. Local residents helping with relief said many tiny islands were still cut off. Because there were no storm shelters, the death and damage toll on those islands could be as high as in Urirchar, they said.

Air Vice-Marshal Sultan Mahmood, the Chief of Air Staff, said a 97km strip from Noakhali to the islands of Pirbkhsh and Char Clark had been ravaged, and he did not see any houses standing except for storm shelters. Residents told Air Marshal Mahmood that 6000 were missing on those islands, he said. In north-eastern India, the typhoon affected about 100,000 people as torrential rains caused landslides, swelled rivers, submerged homes and cut off road, power and communications. At least 10 people died at the week-end in the remote states of Tripura and Manipur, including a woman, aged 95, and two children trapped in a landslide, reported United News of India. It was the worst storm to hit the region since November, 1970, when a typhoon with a maximum wind speed of 222km/h claimed 500,000 lives by official count. However, the “Guiness Book of World Records” put the total at 1 million. Offers of aid from overseas were made yesterday. In Geneva, the Red Cross launched an appeal for 4.4 million Swiss francs (?4 million) to fund emergency relief, while Britain offered to provide £50,000 ($111,000) and the United States gave $U525,000 ($55,000). India said it was sending medicines, food and medical personnel.