Word: dacca
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Danger. Why had the delta's 3,000,000 Bengalis been so unprepared? A U.S. weather satellite's photo of severe weather in the Bay of Bengal had been received in the East Pakistani capital of Dacca more than ten hours before the cyclone struck. A warning -moha bipod shonket (big danger coming)-was broadcast, but someone forgot to include a code number indicating the force of the expected storm...
...worldwide response to the catastrophe was unprecedentedly swift and generous. Less than four days after the cyclone struck, Red Cross supplies were arriving at Dacca airport. Soon the delta skies began to fill with an international fleet of 29 choppers (U.S., British, French, West German and Saudi Arabian), which are the only means of moving supplies rapidly in an area with many canals, few roads and hardly any airstrips. A four-ship British task force anchored in the bay and began choppering food, clothing, medicine and water purification pills to the remote coastal areas. Pledges of aid from 40 countries...
...pilgrimage had proceeded at a headlong pace. Paul's first stop was at Teheran airport in Iran, where the Pope greeted a small crowd of Iranian Roman Catholics and conferred for 30 minutes with Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi. It was long after midnight before the papal plane reached Dacca, where Paul stopped only long enough to deliver a message of sympathy to the stricken East Pakistanis and a contribution of $10,000 toward the relief of the starving victims of the recent cyclone and tidal wave. Even in the air, the Pope was busy, dispatching messages to countries...
Meanwhile, supplies from foreign nations piled up at Dacca airport because the government could not move them to the islands...
...fully manned 150-bed field hospital simply went unanswered; the Pakistanis later explained lamely that they would have been unable to feed the German doctors and nurses. Ordinary inefficiency exacted a toll too. It took 24 hours for a cabled message from the International Red Cross delegate in Dacca to reach the organization's headquarters in Geneva...