By Mahendra Ved, IANS
The death toll in Hurricane Sidr that slammed Bangladesh’s southern coast has remained at four digits, around 3,300, defying the initial alarm, thanks to improved disaster management by the authorities and a fast response from the world community.
The number of those missing remains unclear, while water-borne diseases are also causing casualties in the aftermath. There are complaints about delay in reaching relief to distant coastal areas and offshore islands. But the number is unlikely to touch the 10,000-20,000 given in estimates in the wake of the cyclone.
The final figure may remain by far the lowest in Bangladesh’s long and chequered history of having faced at least 80 cyclones in the last 130 years.
One is not talking, for the moment, of the floods, famines, earthquakes and monsoon-time landslides and mudslides in the Ganga-Jamuna(or Meghna)-Brahmaputra basins when the snow melts in the Himalayas, pushing much of this low-lying, disaster-prone, densely populated nation under water.
Though they do get overwhelmed when calamities hit, the Bangladesh authorities have learnt from past failures.
Delay in reaching relief to the victims of the country’s worst cyclone that struck Nov 12, 1970, and killed 600,000 contributed significantly to the disenchantment and anger with the government of what was then East Pakistan.
Natural calamities followed Bangladesh’s independence in the first half of the 1970s. There was a famine followed by nationwide floods in 1974.
But now, in contrast to those times, when floods from the north and cyclones and tornadoes from the Bay of Bengal hit Bangladesh, the world community rushes in with relief with equal speed.
The country has learnt to live with disasters and meet them, particularly after the 2004 tsunami that hit South and Southeast Asia. Each disaster seems to be making the world more aware of its responsibilities.
The 1985 cyclone Gorki came when the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit was on in New Delhi. India’s Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lanka’s J.R. Jayawardene rushed to Bangladesh and Pakistan’s Zia-ul Haq, King Birendra of Nepal and Maumoon Abdul Gayoom of the Maldives followed.
Cyclone Sidr came 37 years after Bhola, and 15 years after Gorki. Much has changed in Bangladesh in that time: the warning systems are far more sophisticated. Many millions of people were taken to safety before the worst of the storm could hit.
Nonetheless, as winter sets in, there are still a million homeless, and their livelihoods – their crops – have been destroyed.
Despite much international help, Bangladesh lacks any weather satellites of its own. The three satellite ground stations, located in Betbunia, Talibabad and Mohakhali, receive feeds from other satellites.
Bangladesh’s Space Research and Remote Sensing Organisation (Sparrso), a government agency under the ministry of defence, provides storm predictions and early warnings using feeds from US space agency NASA’s satellites. The warnings are usually given on a scale of 10, with the number 10 being given for the deadliest storms.
A detailed programme for storm prevention has been taken up by the Bangladesh government following the cyclone of 1991 that killed 130,000. A Comprehensive Cyclone Preparedness Programme (CPP) is jointly planned, operated and managed by the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief and the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, and a volunteer force of more than 32,000 are trained to help in warning and evacuation in the coastal areas.
Around 2,500 cyclone shelters have been constructed in the coastal regions. The shelters are built on elevated platforms and serve the dual role of schools or community centres during normal weather.
In Patenga, Chittagong, the coast has been heavily protected with concrete levees. Also, forestation has been initiated in the coastal regions to create a green belt.
While tackling Sidr has shown a high measure of preparedness, there is little, however, any government can do if people do not heed the warning. Many perished because they had heard such warnings before that proved to be wolf cries.
(Mahendra Ved writes on South Asian affairs. He can be contacted at [email protected])