Word: tolls
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...official toll of dead and missing stood at 200,000 by week's end, and there were predictions that it would eventually triple or even quintuple. The cyclone was thus guaranteed its place as the 20th century's worst natural disaster. In all, the storm devastated a densely populated, 3,000-sq. mi. area, destroying 90% of the buildings and 90% of the rice crop. In some areas, TIME's Ghulam Malik reported last week, "it was like the beginning of life after Doomsday. People were wandering naked, wailing the names of kin who never responded...
...their pads in West Pakistan. India, the government explained-falsely-would not allow the craft to be ferried over 1,000 miles of its territory. President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan waited a total of 13 days before making a formal visit to the Ganges area to see the toll for himself...
Papanek added that two completely unforeseen factors increased the death toll. Because this is the harvest season, many persons had come out from the mainland temporarily to help the farmers on the islands...
Whatever the final toll, the East Pakistan catastrophe has already reached such dimensions as to make it seem unreal. Up close, it is real enough. Cabled TIME's Ghulam Malik after a tour of Manpura Island: "I could not walk 200 yards without passing heaps of bloated bodies. For miles, animal carcasses littered the landscape. The stench was appalling, the sight of parents hovering over their dead children staggering. My legs shook...
...Britain and other nations be flown by Pakistani pilots. West Germany's offer of a 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...