Cyclone Disaster Toll Climbs

Aid agencies have called for urgent international assistance to help survivors of the cyclone which has devastated parts of Bangladesh, ripping up roads, tearing down buildings and damaging as many as two million homes.

The government said around 1,700 people had died, but that toll might rise as aid workers, helped by ships and military helicopters, battle to reach hundreds of villages cut off by the damage. Power and phone lines were knocked out by heavy rains, slowing down relief efforts and making the full scale of the disaster difficult to estimate.

Bodies littered flattened rice fields along the coast and Bangladesh TV described relatives joining a 'procession of deaths' as they hurried to bury corpses. Local TV put the death toll at 2,000 or more and reporters said hundreds of fishermen, out at sea when the cyclone hit on Thursday, were still unaccounted for.

'The toll is rising fast as we are receiving more information from outlying areas, where telephone lines have been restored,' Mokhlesur Rahman, a Ministry of Disaster Management official, said.

Villagers made their way back to their homes in the south-west of the country yesterday, visibly distressed by the destruction. Homes here, typically made from straw, bamboo, corrugated iron and flimsy timber, were unable to withstand winds of up to 100mph. Many of those buildings which did remain standing were washed away in the tidal wave that followed Cyclone Sidr.

Survivors whose shacks were destroyed sought refuge with neighbors, as volunteers began constructing more permanent shelters. 'We survived, but what we need now is help to rebuild our homes,' said Chand Miah, a resident of Maran Char, an island off the coast.

With as much of 80 per cent of the main annual rice crop ruined by the winds, aid agencies were looking beyond the rescue operation, and warned that the cyclone's longer-term consequences would be severe, further impoverishing a nation already suffering from the effects of this summer's catastrophic flooding in the north of the country.

'We will need to build long-term solutions for those who have lost their homes,' said Ali Asgar, of the Red Cross, estimating that as many as two million homes had been damaged. He said help from the international community was needed urgently. 'These people are very poor and have lost everything. Their need will be very high, and we don't believe the Bangladesh government can help all of them,' he said.

While acknowledging that the final death toll could be much higher, there was relief among many that the disaster had not killed more. In 1970 between 300,000 and half a million people died in a cyclone and Thursday's storm was as strong as a 1991 cyclone which killed around 140,000.

Because Bangladesh is known to be so vulnerable, the government and NGOs have devised cyclone preparedness programs, building shelters, organizing simulated cyclone evacuation exercises and educating villagers in the most exposed areas on how to flee. Efficient early warning systems and the widespread use of mobile phones meant that this time even people in remote regions were aware of the impending disaster.

'Given the scale of the cyclone and given that the areas it hit were so densely populated, it could have been much worse,' Juliet Parker, Christian Aid's representative, said. But she stressed that these preparations had helped to save lives but not livelihoods, adding that millions now risked hunger. Bangladesh is one of the world's most disaster-prone nations. The United Nations Development Program said it had the highest disaster mortality rate in the world, with at least 516,239 people having lost their lives in 171 calamities between 1970 and 2005.

Kelland Stevenson, country director for Save the Children, said: 'People can be very cynical about Bangladesh because it is so disaster-prone. This country is still coping from the floods of the summer. It will be difficult for the government to manage this too.'