Posted on 11/16/2007 2:50:31 AM PST by bd476
Bangladesh cyclone toll at 328
By Anis Ahmed
Fri Nov 16, 2007 5:34am EST
DHAKA (Reuters) - A severe cyclone killed at least 328 people in Bangladesh, triggering a 15-foot (5-metre) high tidal surge that devastated three coastal towns and forced the evacuation of nearly one million people, officials said on Friday.
Local officials and Red Crescent workers said at least 328 deaths have already been confirmed while hundreds more were injured or missing following the cyclone, which struck overnight packing winds of 250 kph (155 mph).
"The death count is rising fast as we get more information from the affected districts," an official at the food and disaster ministry said.
He put the latest official confirmed death toll at 247. "It may go much higher," he said, adding that some areas have not been reached yet.
Fakhruddin Ahmed, chief of Bangladesh's army-backed interim government, flew to some devastated districts on the coasts of the Bay of Bengal on Friday, to see the extent of damage to lives and property, officials said.
The cyclone, which followed devastating floods in July-September that killed more than 1,000 people, posed a new challenge to the interim administration, mainly tasked to hold a free and fair election before the end of next year.
The cycle triggered a tidal surge that inundated the towns of Patuakhali, Barguna and Jhalakathi, cutting off communication links. A government official in Dhaka said there was no immediate information about casualties from the area.
Nearly a million people were evacuated in 13 coastal districts, officials said.
NOW A TROPICAL STORM
By early Friday the storm had weakened to a tropical storm and had moved well inland northeast of Dhaka.
The Bangladesh navy has launched a search and rescue operation while helicopters began ferrying relief supplies to offshore islands, the defense ministry said.
Most of the deaths were caused by collapsing houses and flying debris. Three people were electrocuted in the capital Dhaka.
Agriculture officials said rice and other crops in the cyclone-battered areas were badly damaged, and caused added suffering to the villagers who had earlier lost two crops in the floods.
"Life shall never be easy," said Mohammad Salam, a farmer in Khulna. "We are destined to suffer."
Storms batter the poor south Asian country every year. A severe cyclone killed more than half a million people in 1970, while another in 1991 killed 143,000.
Hundreds of fishing boats caught in the cyclone failed to return to shore, while trees and power poles were uprooted, disrupting communication and electricity supplies.
"We have been virtually blacked out all over the country," said a disaster management official in southern Mongla, another of the worst affected areas.
Television news reports said more than 100 fishing boats in the Bay of Bengal had failed to return to shore despite repeated storm warnings given over the radio. Many boats, however, may have been small vessels without such equipment.
The storm blew past India's eastern coast without causing much damage, police and weather officials there said on Friday.
(Additional reporting by Nizam Ahmed and Azad Majumder in Dhaka and Reuters stringers in Barisal and Khulna, and Bappa Majumdar in Kolkata; Editing by Bill Tarrant)
Global Warming , Bush, etc.-—you know the drill.
Prayers extended for all who didn't make it and for those who have not yet been found.
Sea Levels rise 15 feet, must be Global Warming!
Very sad situation. We are very blessed to have early warning technologies and sturdy structures to protect our coastal residents.
Yes, we really are blessed.
As bad as this is, this would have been a much worse disaster had they not evacuated the many people evacuated prior to the cyclone making landfall.
Three towns and near a million folks?
Got news for ya, a town has like 12,000 people.
3 or 4 hundred thousand people isn’t a “town” in any dictionary I ever saw.
Bangla Desh is widely recognized as being one of the most vulnerable places on Earth.
Huge pop densities and an average sea level that’s like half of Florida. The only thing that really spares them is that the Indian ocean usually doesn’t spawn the kinds of storms that come from the Atlantic or Pacific.
Somebody call Ravi Shankar.
Comparing an American town to a town in Bangla Desh only seems to work for P.J. O'Rourke like when he compared all of Bangla Desh to Fresno, California in his discussion about economics in "All the Trouble in the World."
Believe me, I would love nothing better than to quote P.J. O'Rourke but a) P.J. is best read on less serious threads and b) reading P.J. O'Rourke is something one does at night only if you've cleared your calendar until after noon, which I haven't.
Instead, I think I'll just agree that Bangla Desh has extremely populated towns.
CIA Factbook: Bangla Desh
Area:
total: 144,000 sq km
land: 133,910 sq km
water: 10,090 sq km
Population:
150,448,339 (July 2007 est.)
104,205,000 (1988 Population)
Bangla Desh
While any number of deaths is sad, I am surprised at the relatively low number of deaths from this hurricane (so far).
Considering the history of deaths by hurricane in this region, and the size of the winds, I had expected the death toll to be in the tens of thousands.
We’ll have to see what has happened after the storm has passed however.
Since one square kilometer is about a third of a square mile, the 144,000 there is less than the 60,000 or so sq m in Washington state.
I can’t even imagine having 150 million people in Washington. The 5 or so we have is about 2 too many as it is!
The rough equivalent would be that instead of having one Seattle, there would be a HUNDRED of them spread across the state!
Astounding.
That sure would be astounding.
Thanks for giving a good sketch.
Couple hours ago it was 1700 fatalities and 2/3 the rice crop lost. Can the USA make up the shortage in rice?
Can we come up with enough rice to feed 100 million people, from our surplus?? Well our total annual export crop is about 5 million tons. Bengladesh is short 27 million tons. What do you think? (figures based on Wikipedia article).
Uh oh. That rice crop loss may be far worse in the long run than the death toll from the storm.
I’m hearing that at least this time there was an evacuation, and that sounds like it maybe saved thousands of lives. They’ve had losses in the tens of thousands there before, and with regularity.
Sat Nov 17, 2007 10:29 AM EST
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/19/wcyclone119.xml
Bangladesh cyclone death toll hits 15,000
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