Word: dead
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...seven hours, through the dead of night, the screaming winds whipped across the Bay of Bengal at up to 100 m.p.h., pushing before them a thunderous storm surge that crested as high as 50 ft. On Char Clarke, an islet seven miles southwest of Urirchar, Ali Ahmed, 46, first heard the wind gusting violently during the early part of the night and saw the mangroves swaying wildly. As island elders huddled around a radio, trees and whole huts began crashing to the earth around them. Finally the huge tidal surge ravaged the settlement, submerging all except those who managed...
...breadth of Urirchar there hung an eerie silence, broken now and then by the wails of survivors. Only a few houses remained, among them the Forestry Department building. Of some 10,000 residents of the islet, mostly peasant farmers and a few shopkeepers, up to 7,000 were dead or missing. The flat, wet land was dotted with corpses and the carcasses of cattle; vultures and crows feasted. Upon the muddy waves of the Bay of Bengal floated hundreds upon hundreds of blackened, bloated bodies...
...densely populated nations on earth: 96 million people -- more than four times the population of California -- are crammed into an area the size of Wisconsin. The cyclone aggravated already serious problems. It shattered much of the economic fabric of Bangladesh's coastal areas, leaving at least 30,000 cattle dead, about 3,000 sq. mi. of cropland ravaged, vital fishing grounds wasted. It also left tens of thousands of subsistence farmers both shelterless and penniless...
...corpses were, to be sure, committed as quickly as possible to mass graves, but by that time they had been lying in the open long enough to arouse fears of epidemics. Only a few days after the storm struck, 40 people were dead of cholera, and others were described as in critical condition. When the first relief teams landed on Urirchar, they tried to inoculate 300 people against typhoid, tetanus and cholera. But the resources at hand were totally inadequate: all the injections had to be given with the same needle because replacements were not available. "We cannot change...
...full scope of the tragedy sank in, the people of Bangladesh rallied to recover. In the commercial areas of Dhaka and in other towns and cities spared by the storm, students energetically collected money for the homeless, while devout citizens offered gaibana janaza, or prayers for the unburied dead. Government employees contributed a day's pay to help the destitute, and banks and private companies pitched in with relief efforts of their...