Word: bangladesh
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...some 27 million people were affected by Cyclone Sidr, the category 4 storm that swept through Bangladesh last week, flattening houses, damaging buildings and roads, and destroying thousands of acres of crops. More than 2,000 people were killed, according to official numbers, and the toll could eventually reach 10,000. But even as Bangladesh begins a massive cleanup operation, many are thankful that it wasn't much worse. As devastating as it was, Sidr has taken far fewer lives than 1991's Cyclone Gorky, which killed at least 138,000 people, and 1970's Bhola, which left as many...
...Mainly, this is because Bangladesh has gotten a lot better at dealing with cyclones, which build in the Bay of Bengal and surge north to hit the country with dreadful regularity. Over the past decade especially, the country's early warning and preparedness systems have improved considerably. Officials evacuated some 3.2 million people who lived along the coastline in the days before Sidr hit, and stockpiled relief supplies and rescue equipment. Soon after the storm passed, the Bangladeshi government quickly began distributing 4,000 metric tons of rice, along with thousands of tents and blankets, and deployed more than...
...Still, keeping future death tolls low is likely to get a lot harder. Scientists believe that global warming will make cyclones in the region bigger and more frequent. That's bad news for Bangladesh, whose location and geography makes it not only particularly susceptible to the effects of climate change but also extremely hard to protect. Most of Bangladesh sits on the giant alluvial delta created by the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, whose courses are constantly shifting, making it difficult to build up river banks to protect farmland. A World Bank project, backed by France, Japan and the U.S., would...
...BANGLADESH...
...Bangladesh declared a state of emergency in January 2007, with Moeen deploying the armed forces to end riots in the nation’s major cities. The provisional government will leave office in December 2008, Moeen has said. —Staff writer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu...