Surviving the aftermath of Cyclone Sidr

23 November 2007

"We didn’t think," she says. "We just held on to anything that was there." Asia counts off the material cost of the disaster: five cows, four goats, and her home. Two days after the storm, she also found the body of her niece, who had been carried nearly three kilometers (2 miles) by the storm surge.

The villagers in Katachira have managed to recover 70 bodies. At least 200 people are still missing, and the body of another child, a little girl was discovered only a day ago. The major concern in the days immediately following the cyclone was how to bury children, wives and husbands, properly when nothing was left .

Like others who survived, Asia managed to resist the sea surge following the storm by holding on to a tree. Another family survived miraculously with 15 members hanging on to branches of the same tree. The few cattle and goats who survived, were also caught by tree limbs, according to the villagers, and managed to keep their heads above the water.

Khatachira is near one of the largest mangrove forests in the world. As the level of the water rose, eventually approaching 5 meters (16 feet) higher, the villagers held on to higher and higher branches of the trees. When the water level finally dropped, after about five or six hours, some people were clinging to branches that were so high off the ground that they didn’t know how to get back down.
Abdul Kudos, 68, who lost his fishing boat and means of earning a livelihood, says he can’t remember what actually happened, or how he managed to survive.

Feroza, 35, who lives in the same village, lost nearly everything that she had. She tried to hold on to a tree, but was swept two kilometers (1.5 miles) away from the village. Her two-year old daughter drowned. Her five cows perished. Her clothes were torn from her body by the force of the current. She had to borrow new clothes from a neighbor. Today she lives and sleeps on an open patch of ground where her house once stood like many of her neighbors in Katachira.

Most of the survivors in what is left of Khatachira feel that it is a miracle that they are alive. But in an ironic twist of fate the fact that so many people survived this cyclone in comparison to earlier ones, means that there are many more people who are in desperate need of food and support than in previous storms.

Bangladesh now faces an immense challenge in trying to keep the survivors alive. The fishing boats that used to provide food for Katachira were smashed by the storm. The 200 or more houses that once made up the village were swept away, in many cases without leaving any trace that they were ever there. The market that people relied on for food is gone, and no one has any money to pay in any case. The government dropped off some rations a few days after the storm, but they were gone in a day.

For many people the period after the storm promises to be just as dangerous and demanding as surviving the storm itself. Polluted water will begin to spread dysentery if effective action is not taken quickly. Two small children have already died from an outbreak of diarrhea, and more will very likely follow soon. Khatachira’s only source of water is a stagnant pond, filled with blackened leaves.

CARE is distributing both food and essential non-food materials needed for survival. But whether these efforts will be sufficient, will depend largely on donors and the public providing sufficient funding to reach the largest number of people possible. In the meantime, people in the places that were most heavily damaged by the storm, know that they can’t survive a long wait for help to come. "We were able to cook some food yesterday," says Asia, "but we don’t know what will happen today or tomorrow."

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