Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

I was born in a country called Bangladesh - a country half a world away. I live today in the United States. I have never felt as disconnected from the land of my birth as I do today.

It is a cold sunny afternoon in the suburbs of Washington DC. The daily din of commerce is all around me, yet my mind is elsewhere. Yesterday it rained steadily all day here as I followed the news on the Internet. Half a world away, on the other side of our planet, my people were dying.

Tropical Cyclone Sidr struck the coastline of Bangladesh Thursday night Bangladesh time while it drizzled in Washington. The full force of the Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph struck a country which is mostly at or slightly above sea level. The storm made landfall at high tide with a massive storm surge coming ashore to the east of the eye. The latest reports indicate at least 1,100 people have lost their lives. That number is sure to rise in the coming hours, days and weeks as communications are restored to the affected areas and as rescuers reach the most devastated regions. All communications to the southwestern coast of Bangladesh are down. Power is down in most of the country, including the capital city of Dhaka, which is in the interior. My attempts at reaching my relatives by phone in both the capital city and the port city of Chittagong failed last night, perhaps due to downed utility lines or due to the volume of calls from outside the country flooding the international circuits.

I mostly blog about politics and foreign policy. We in the blogs often debate important issues of domestic and foreign policy. I often write about the dream of democracy in Bangladesh. But what I write about and what we in the blogs debate is fundamentally about the people. Last night in Bangladesh countless people - men, women, children, real families who laughed and cried, who shared happy and sad times - perished. We have not yet counted all who have died and we may never be able to count the families that have been taken by the sea. We will never know all of their names. Soon, as the death toll climbs, we will only remember them as part of a larger number - one part in a thousand or maybe tens of thousands. But we will know this. We will know that yesterday they were among the living, and today they are no more.

It is difficult sitting here in Washington to fathom what has happened on the other side of the planet. However, Bengalis are my people and I feel an unexplainable bond toward their human condition. Yesterday I was referred by an online friend to this post on the Daily Kos about the then aproaching Sidr. It was a post that was on the Recommended List at Daily Kos. The day before there was another post on Daily Kos about Sidr. The posts and the comments give me hope that there are those on this planet who genuinely care for others, even those that live in distant lands and seem so different. It gives me hope.

Earlier this year I wrote about the overwhelming American response to the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh. That response saved over 200,000 lives. It gives me hope.

Today I cannot write much about the facts and figures of the devastation that Sidr has wreaked on the people and the land of Bangladesh. In the coming days there will be many reports, each likely to be more horrific than the other. Today I write about losing a portion of humanity to the random brutality of nature. The relief work will soon begin and many survivors will have to be rescued and rehabilitated in the coming days. My thoughts today are with those who perished and with those who survived. Bangladesh to its people is known as Sonar Bangla, or, Golden Bengal. Many times before Bengalis have had to rebuild their Golden Bengal from the ravages of man and nature. That work again begins today.

[Note: Donations for cyclone relief can be made online at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies]

Tropical Cyclone Sidr, a powerful Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph, is expected to make landfall late Thursday (Friday morning Bangladesh time) somewhere between Kolkata and the western coastline of Bangladesh. Millions of people along the coastline of Bangladesh and India are in the path of this massive storm.  The storm is expected to weaken somewhat before making landfall. Bloomberg reports:

Tropical Cyclone Sidr’s winds strengthened to 241 kilometers (150 miles) per hour as it moved across the Bay of Bengal toward Kolkata in India and the west coast of Bangladesh, the U.S. Navy’s typhoon center said.

The eye of Sidr, a Category 4 storm, was 667 kilometers south of Kolkata at 11:30 p.m. local time yesterday, according to the latest advisory on the navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center Web site. The storm is moving north at 17 kilometers an hour.

Bangladesh authorities ordered thousands of people to evacuate coastal areas around Chittagong, Mongla and Cox’s Bazaar and raised the highest alert, Associated Press reported. In India, authorities issued warnings to residents in Kolkata and nearby coastal areas, the Hindu Times said.

…

Sidr’s winds were gusting to 296 kilometers per hour and waves in the vicinity of the storm’s eye were 12 meters (40 feet) high, according to the advisory. The cyclone is expected to maintain strength today before weakening as it approaches Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, and Bangladesh late tomorrow.

Bangladesh has a tragic history of devastating cyclones. In 1970, the deadliest storm ever recorded, the Bhola Cyclone, struck Bangladesh and claimed up to 500,000 lives. Emergency preparedness has improved dramatically in independent Bangladesh since the Bhola Cyclone. I hope the evacuations and early warning systems will prevent a large loss of life from this storm as it comes ashore. I hope also that the forcasts predicting some weakening of this storm bear out and blunt the power of this cyclone.

My thoughts and prayers are with my friends and family and the entire people of Bangladesh as they once again confront nature’s wrath.

Update (11/15/2007 5:00PM):

Sidr made landfall along the western coastline of Bangladesh a few hours ago. It accelerated and did not lose any of its strength as it made landfall. It struck with maximum sustained winds of 150MPH as a very strong category 4 storm. The storm came ashore during high tide with potentially catastropic consequences. Damage is expected from the storm surge, wind and resultant flooding:

A powerful cyclone slammed into Bangladesh on Thursday night, tearing down flimsy houses, toppling trees and power poles, and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes in the low-lying nation. 

Tropical Cyclone Sidr swept in from the Bay of Bengal packing winds of 149 mph (240 kilometers per hour), buffeting southwestern coastal areas within a 155-mile radius of its eye with heavy rain and storm surges predicted to reach 20 feet high.

Sidr’s eye crossed the Khulna-Barisal coast near the Sundarbans mangrove forests around 9:30 p.m. (11:30 a.m. ET), the Bangladesh Meteorological Department said. It was centered over the Baleshwar River in Barguna district.

In the coastal districts of Bagerhat, Barisal and Bhola, residents said the storm flattened thousands of flimsy straw and mud huts, and uprooted trees and electric poles.

"We sitting out the storm by candlelight," resident Bishnu Prashad said by phone from Bagerhat.

At least 620,000 people had moved into official shelters and 3.2 million people were expected to be evacuated in all, said Ali Imam Majumder, a senior government official in Dhaka.

No casualties were immediately reported, but rescue teams were on standby, forest official Mozharul Islam said in Khulna.

Communications with remote forest areas and offshore islands were temporarily cut off.

The extent of the damage and loss of life will not be known at least until daybreak in Bangladesh. It will probably take several days beyond that to take stock of the devastation. I will update this post as news becomes available from Bangladesh.

Update (11/16/2007 2:56 am): Early reports state that at least 242 people have been killed by Sidr. Communications and electricity are down across Bangladesh. The real scale of the devastation is not yet known. MSNBC reports:

A cyclone that slammed into Bangladesh’s coast with 140 mph winds killed at least 242 people, leveled homes and forced the evacuation of 650,000 villagers before heading inland and losing power Friday, officials said.

Tropical Cyclone Sidr roared across the country’s southwestern coast late Thursday with driving rain and high waves. The storm left about 242 villagers dead from falling debris, said Nahid Sultana, an official at a cyclone control room in Dhaka.

By early Friday, the cyclone had weakened into a tropical storm and was moving across the country to the northeast, with overcast skies and wind speed falling to 37 mph, the department said.