Word: bangladesh
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...months. America was gripped by the worst heat wave and drought in decades. Hurricane Gilbert, considered the most violent storm nature can produce, has caused thousands in Texas to evacuate the Gulf coast and billions of dollars worth of damage in Jamaica and Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. In Bangladesh, some 40,000 homes have been destroyed by flooding and the stagnating flood waters may spread disease through most of the population. The forest fires in the Northwest, exacerbated by the weather, have burned an area approximately the size of Connecticut and still have not been brought under control...
Obviously a population explosion doesn't start hurricanes to form in the Carribbean, or natural floods in Bangladesh. But it does mean that when those things happen, they affect more people who are living in more densely populated areas. The days when a huge storm could develop, blow and dissipate without affecting a soul are long since gone. This explains how we can keep hearing about "worst-ever" disasters--if Jamaica or the coast of Texas are twice the population of what they were the last time a storm the size of Gilbert hit, then twice as many people will...
...beautiful park land have been destroyed by the fires in Yellowstone, but they can grow back and very few people were physically hurt by them. There was enough warning from the rest of us to save people's lives, if not their property. The same is true in Bangladesh, where resuce teams from around the world will help to control the spread of disease. Gilbert has caused horrible property damage, but no lives have been lost...
...know why God should punish us like this," sighed the weary President of Bangladesh, Hussain Mohammed Ershad, as he looked out a helicopter window at the devastation below. Even by the standards of his perennially destitute country, the punishment this time seemed inordinately cruel. As much as three-quarters of Bangladesh -- a country the size of Wisconsin crowded with 110 million people -- lay under water after it and neighboring India, Bhutan and Nepal were pelted by what may have been the heaviest monsoon rains in 70 years. An estimated 30 million Bangladeshis were left homeless. Many hundreds perished, though...
...most crippling long-term blow to Bangladesh could be the massive damage to its roads, railways, bridges, dikes and buildings. With 17 years of hard-won development all but obliterated, Ershad said grimly, "It is not possible to survive like this. Whatever we have built, most of it is gone. It will take millions and millions of dollars, even billions, to repair the damage...