Watching the images of the approaching Cyclone Roanu on television screens we all apprehended that a devastating 'monster' from the sea will slam Bangladesh shores with all its fury and cruelty. It did slam the shores but turned out to be far less destructive than was feared, claiming around 25 lives and causing substantial damage to shoreline properties.
However, it reminded me of another far more aggressive and destructive cyclone on April 29, 1991, that had left at least 138,000 people killed and millions homeless along the battered shores of the Bay of Bengal.
Then working as a reporter for the international news agency Reuters, I received instruction from the agency's headquarters in London, through my local bureau chief late lamented Atiqul Alam, to rush to the shores without 'wasting a single hour,' taking along a Reuters photographer, to do report on the cyclone's aftermath, with on-the-spot assessment of losses and analysis of impacts.
We left Dhaka the next morning by road and reached Chittagong in the afternoon. Along the road we were terrified o see the extent of damage caused by the killer cyclone and so many dead bodies littering on both sides, in the debris of wrecked houses and in the bushes where people tried to find a shelter. It was in desperation that people wanted to cling on to anything they could find during the storm. Several bodies were seen hanging from or stuck on trees that still were standing, but virtually ripped off all their leaves. Similarly were stuck corrugated tins ripped from the roofs, even a tube well and concrete pillars torn off the buildings. It was a complete disaster scene that appalled us even more as we approached the shoreline.
In Chittagong, which looked like a war ravaged city, we met my greatest friend and colleague forever Nizam Ahmed, an indomitably spirited journalist in the port city. Using his experiences and knowledge of the cyclone-hit zones, Nizam led us to the Patenga shore and areas around where eyes stuck every moment on piles of human and animal corpses, some already bloating but not spreading stinks yet.
Several ships were seen badly mauled and ruffled up along the shore and at the far away outer anchorage of Chittagong Port several large vessels sank. Some had been torn off their anchors and swept away by strong wind and waves of the sea.
On the shore, Chittagong airport runways were totally under water driven by the cyclone from the Bay. It was a terrible scene even to imagine.
At the nearby military air base, several war planes were swept off by the surging waters and damaged. But several jets had been flown to Dhaka before the cyclone made landfall in Chittagong, so they were saved. Yet, losses had been unimaginably high.
We saw some survivors looking for their missing near and dear ones and picking them dead, huge number of dead men, women and animals floating near the shore in the wildly cascading water of the Bay of Bay of Bengal -- which was still fiercely making noise of anger. We could hardly stand this but as on-duty reporters we must be there as long as reporting demands. We had almost no food all day as houses, shops and markets had been devastated and razed to the ground. Ending the day's work we returned to Chittagong to file my reports. The photographer filed his pictures of the great devastation to the Dhaka office where from they were forwarded to London, Singapore, Hong Kong or Reuter's any other regional office.
We made plans for the next day and started early in the morning for the same shore we visited on our first day. It looked different today - with many corpses pushed near the shore and stinks from the bloated bodies wafting in the air making it difficult for us to breathe.
We covered our noses with napkins and went on working with note books scribbled with new information, camera clicking on new photos and we talking with few people coming on the wrecked shore for 'witness accounts' of the cyclone, how they survived, how many family members and relatives they lost, how many are missing and so on. At that time we had no cellphone, no laptop or any tool to file our stories from the spot. As twilight started descending, we rushed back to Chittagong and filed our reports which made international headlines day after day. Still, our bosses wanted more details, analysis, graphical descriptions and tales of human woes. We did our best and got very positive feedback from our principals when we returned to Dhaka.
On the third or fourth day, when we were scouring the shores for more stories, we noticed a flotilla of foreign navy ships on the sea, far from the beach. It was an American rescue task force, named Operation Sea Angel, which had diverted its course towards Bangladesh while returning from a mission somewhere in the Arabian Sea. The Sea Angel stayed in Bangladesh for weeks, extending their rescue, relief and medical operations. They boosted efforts by the Bangladesh Army, Navy and other forces in the aftermath of the cyclone. Two C-130 US transport planes later joined the operations, carrying relief materials from Dhaka to Chittagong for onward distribution. Everything was being done on a war footing.
I am recounting the devastations caused to Bangladesh a quarter century ago and may have missed some points as memories often get blurred over so many years. Still I gave you a broad outline of what happened then, how media professionals handled it and how badly it impacted life and living in Bangladesh.
Tens of thousands of families were evacuated to cyclone shelters ahead of the more than 200 square kilometer per hour storm returned o their homes after a few days - but to no home as everything had been washed or blown away with little or no trace left of what they had or where they lived in before running for safety.
Official estimates put the cyclone death toll at last 138,000 but we think it was a 'conservative' figure because counting all the dead from such a huge cyclone is quite impossible.
Not only Chittagong, the 1991 cyclone also completely devastated the country's prime tourist town Cox's Bazar and a string of islands in the Bay of Bengal. I will recount some of them in another memory piece I plan to write soon.
Anis Ahmed is Executive Editor, The Daily Observer