Surviving Cyclone Sidr

21 November 2007 Katachira experienced the full force of the cyclone. There used to be nearly 200 houses. Most were swept away by the sea surge that came with the cyclone, and the few houses that remain are twisted shells of corrugated iron. Mumtaz says that a warning was given two days before the cyclone actually hit. But she was unclear about the true nature of the danger. This area had not experienced a major cyclone sine the 1970s. A few people walked several kilometers to a concrete shelter, but then came back when they found that there was no room and nothing seemed to be happening with the weather. Most of these villages have no electricity, and little communications with the outside world.

During the evening of November 15, Mumtaz could tell that the wind was increasing, but she still felt safe. Then suddenly, water began flooding into her house. The water level rose more than three meters (10 feet) and eventually submerged everything in Katachira. As the current began tearing at her house, Mumtaz grabbed her two and a half year old son and ran into the howling wind outside. Cyclone Sidr registered gusts up to 240 kilometers (155 miles) an hour. Mumtaz found that the water was coming at her from all directions. She grabbed the trunk of a tree and held on against the rushing current, all the while holding on to her child in the other arm. After a few moments, the water ripped her child away.

The next day she found the little boy’s body three kilometers (nearly two miles) from where her house had been. Her two older boys, six and ten, were in the house, when it was washed away. Miraculously, despite being carried away by the current, they survived but they were in shock and shivering uncontrollably, when neighbors found them and lighted a fire to warm them. Mumtaz’s husband broke his ankle during the surge, and today he sits under a makeshift lean to, unable to walk.

“I had a fishing boat,” Mumtaz says. “Now I have nothing.” She sleeps with her children in the open, next to a few wooden boards, which are all that is left of her house.

Mumtaz stands in front of her former house.

A government relief team delivered 1 to 1.2 kilos of rice and some sugar and oil to some of the families. The package that Mumtaz received was eventually divided between three families.

“We had some of the leftovers, some fermented rice, this morning,” she says. Now we have nothing. We don’t know when we will eat again.” In Katachira, it is impossible to drink from the river, which is mixed with saltwater from the sea. The people, who have returned, take drinking water from a nearby stagnant pond, which is also polluted and filled with black leaves. The bloated corpses of dead cattle are scattered along the riverbanks, and the bodies of drowned goats and other livestock float by.

A market that used to feed the village was washed away without leaving a trace. The village’s fishing boats have been smashed to pieces. In Katachira, the only thing that signals that the village is still a village is the people who have returned to where their houses once stood. Most people in the village agree that they desperately need food and drinking water if they are going to make it.

While the extent of the damage in Katachira and other villages like it is being assessed, CARE and other humanitarian organizations have already begun distribution of food, and materials needed to help villagers get through the catastrophe. But the amount of help that can be provided depends to a large extent on funding. “If our luck is good,” says Mumtaz, “we will live.”