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Bangladesh cyclone toll at 328 (15ft tidal surge, 155mph winds)
Reuters ^ | 17 November 2007 | By Anis Ahmed

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)



TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bangladesh; cyclone

1 posted on 11/16/2007 2:50:32 AM PST by bd476
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To: bd476

Global Warming , Bush, etc.-—you know the drill.


2 posted on 11/16/2007 2:58:57 AM PST by Carl LaFong (Building Code Under Fire)
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To: Lijahsbubbe; dirtboy; Brad's Gramma
Prayers extended for all who didn't make it and for those who have not yet been found.

3 posted on 11/16/2007 3:02:40 AM PST by bd476
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To: Carl LaFong

Sea Levels rise 15 feet, must be Global Warming!


4 posted on 11/16/2007 3:14:01 AM PST by ricks_place
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To: bd476

Very sad situation. We are very blessed to have early warning technologies and sturdy structures to protect our coastal residents.


5 posted on 11/16/2007 3:35:08 AM PST by Think free or die
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To: Think free or die
Think free or die wrote: "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.

6 posted on 11/16/2007 3:37:56 AM PST by bd476
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To: bd476

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.


7 posted on 11/16/2007 3:39:04 AM PST by djf (Send Fred some bread! Not a whole loaf, a slice or two will do!)
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To: ricks_place
The flooding in 1970 was staggering, it took weeks to estimate the death toll. At the time Bangladesh was part of Pakistan (East Pakistan), and the failure of the corrupt Pakistan government in relief operations led to the secession of Bangladesh, and also led to the rise to power of Benazhir Bhutto’s father to power in Pakistan as a reaction.
8 posted on 11/16/2007 3:40:24 AM PST by Lucius Cornelius Sulla (Ron Paul Criminality: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/10/paul_bot)
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla

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.


9 posted on 11/16/2007 3:44:10 AM PST by djf (Send Fred some bread! Not a whole loaf, a slice or two will do!)
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To: Carl LaFong

Somebody call Ravi Shankar.


10 posted on 11/16/2007 3:49:06 AM PST by GeneralisimoFranciscoFranco (I love liberals. They taste like chicken.)
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To: djf
djf wrote: "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."
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

11 posted on 11/16/2007 4:14:07 AM PST by bd476
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To: bd476

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.


12 posted on 11/16/2007 4:16:33 AM PST by kidd
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To: bd476

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.


13 posted on 11/16/2007 4:32:13 AM PST by djf (Send Fred some bread! Not a whole loaf, a slice or two will do!)
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To: djf
djf wrote: "...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.


14 posted on 11/16/2007 4:39:34 AM PST by bd476
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To: kidd

Couple hours ago it was 1700 fatalities and 2/3 the rice crop lost. Can the USA make up the shortage in rice?


15 posted on 11/17/2007 12:47:07 PM PST by RightWhale (anti-razors are pro-life)
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To: RightWhale
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).

16 posted on 11/17/2007 1:07:22 PM PST by Lucius Cornelius Sulla (Ron Paul Criminality: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/10/paul_bot)
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To: RightWhale

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.


17 posted on 11/17/2007 1:18:41 PM PST by Ramius (Personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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To: bd476
Bangladesh toll more than 1,500
18 posted on 11/17/2007 1:34:34 PM PST by blam (Secure the border and enforce the law)
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To: blam
Bangladesh cyclone toll tops 1600

Sat Nov 17, 2007 10:29 AM EST

19 posted on 11/17/2007 2:10:26 PM PST by blam (Secure the border and enforce the law)
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To: kidd; dirtboy; bd476

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/19/wcyclone119.xml

Bangladesh cyclone death toll hits 15,000


20 posted on 11/18/2007 10:33:32 PM PST by Lijahsbubbe
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