Thousands of homes were ripped apart by ferocious winds, and tracts of farmland have been severely damaged.

“The first priority is to distribute food and other relief items, to provide emergency shelter, and to ensure that people have access to basic health care, and clean water,” explained the Devendra Tak, the International Federation’s communications officer in Delhi who is preparing to leave for Dhaka. “In the longer-term needs are likely to include psycho-social support, shelter rehabilitation, restoration of water and sanitation facilities, as well as livelihoods provision and support.”

Since Wednesday (14 November), about 40,000 Bangladesh Red Crescent volunteers have been mobilized to help alert and evacuate hundreds of thousands of people as the cyclone approached, and volunteers are also helping to distribute relief items, provide first aid and help with search and rescue.

Up to 10,000 people are believed to have died in the cyclone that ripped through Bangladesh, according to the head of the country’s Red Crescent Society.

Officially more than 2,200 have been killed, with hundreds more still missing.

A government official declared the disaster “a national calamity”.

Military ships and helicopters are trying to reach thousands of people believed stranded on islands in the Bay of Bengal and coastal areas still cut off by the storm.

Officials expect the death toll to rise further following the cyclone which hit on Thursday night.

“It will take several days to complete the search and know the actual casualty figure and extent of damage to property,” said food and disaster ministry official Ayub Miah.

Source: SKY

Bangladesh said Sunday the death toll from a massive cyclone has hit 2,000, with that grim tally certain to rise as the impoverished country struggled to aid millions left homeless and hungry.

The death toll has been jumping by hundreds at a time as rescue workers fight their way to remote areas where entire villages were flattened by the fury of Cyclone Sidr, which tore through southern Bangladesh on Thursday night.

Victims in the worst-hit areas told AFP they were helpless and in desperate need of food and water.

“I lost six of my family members in the cyclone. I am afraid that the rest three of us will die of hunger. We are without food and water for the last few days,” said 55-year-old farmer Sattar Gazi in the village of Nishanbari.

“For the corpses we don’t even have clothes to wrap them in for burial… we are wrapping the bodies in leaves,” he said in the village, situated on the Bay of Bengal coast and smashed by a six-metre (20 foot) high tidal wave.

Source: France24

Cyclone Sidr an ‘ecological disaster’

Dhaka - Experts said Sunday they feared for the wildlife and ecology of the world’s biggest mangrove forest after a deadly cyclone tore through the Sunderbans - home to the endangered Royal Bengal tiger.

Zunayed Kabir Chowdhury, a Dhaka-based mangrove expert, said he feared thousands of deer as well as many tigers and wild boar had been swept away by the massive tidal wave triggered by cyclone Sidr last Thursday.

“The eye of the cyclone hit the part of the Sunderbans which is known to be the most important habitat of the tigers and other wildlife,” he said.

The nests of many birds would also have been destroyed, he added.

Source: iol

Filed under: Cyclone, Red Crescent