Bangladesh emergency blog

 

 

David Wightwick, Emergencies Adviser, writes from Bangladesh

Tuesday 20 November

I arrived in Dhaka early on Monday morning tired and jetlagged. However, under the circumstances, the motivation to stay awake was high. While Dhaka saw the milder side of Cyclone Sidr, the damage is still clear from the broken roofs we passed on the way from the airport.

Further to the south the full picture is still emerging. The local papers are full of heart-rending stories from survivors. The number of dead now stands at 3,000 and rising. More bodies are still being discovered as survivors and rescuers begin the long clean-up and relief operation, slowly revealing the full extent of the disaster.

Photo of Patuakhali, a district in the south of Bangladesh.

The Bangladeshi government and relief agencies are scrambling to reach survivors in exceptionally difficult circumstances. Many roads are cut off and some communities are accessible only by small boat or helicopter - both of which limit the amount of aid that can be brought in, and where it can be delivered.

Under such desperate circumstances Save the Children is well aware that children are the most vulnerable and we are beginning to build centres for child protection. Aside from offering a safe space, the centres also provide children with a cooked meal, clean water and health screening.

As Save the Children was preparing for the cyclone even before it hit, we are one of the few aid agencies able to respond immediately, delivering assistance in the form of shelter, health care, clean water and hygiene packs in order to meet the needs of the population. However, many more communities are still to be reached as available resources are being stretched ever thinner.

Wednesday 21 November

Flying over the seafront towns of southern Bangladesh reveals the extent of the disaster. I can see rows of flattened crops and destroyed houses, boats in the middle of roads and dead cattle floating in the village ponds.

In Pathorghata on the Bay of Bengal, the one cyclone shelter had room for 250 people out of a population of 40,000. As the storm approached, people fought to get inside. After managing to squeeze in over 400 people, the authorities were forced to lock the doors to prevent a further 1,000 people outside from swamping the building. None of those outside survived the impact of the 30 foot high wall of water that crashed through the town.

Right now, however, we have to focus on helping people survive the aftermath of the disaster and on rebuilding people's means to earn a living. Save the Children has been distributing emergency items for almost a week. Operations are in full swing as needs emerge in newly accessible areas and teams fan out across the huge affected area. While the scale of the relief effort is vast, we are all conscious of the fact that there is a need for twice as much help.

Thursday 22 November

As the roads are gradually cleared more villages are reached. There are still areas accessible only from the air, but now only a few. Aid is getting through, but there remains the difficulty of exactly where to place it.

The Cyclone was capricious in who it targeted - destroying a house, but not touching the neighbour, flattening acres of crops, but leaving one field untouched in the middle of total devastation.

While attempting to blanket the area with aid, the scarcity of available resources means that we have to target carefully to reach the most vulnerable and most affected people. This has been the task of assessment and distribution teams deployed since day one of the disaster.

The scope of activities is huge

Save the Children is now operating in 9 districts each of which has a population of 1 to 2 million people.

Teams have established 10 Child Protection Centres - which also double as centres for distribution of hygiene packs, household kits and blankets (it's now winter and getting colder). Distribution continues apace through a small army of volunteers and support workers.

As more needs are uncovered the hope is that supplies will still be available in the next months, which will be crucial for the survival of affected communities. Bangladesh lost a significant proportion of its rice crop and a major effort will have to be made to ensure people have a secure supply of food until the next main harvesting season in May/June next year.

Thursday 29 November

A very rough definition of logistics is ?moving stuff from A to B?. However in an area largely under water, bisected by hundreds of rivers in which half the local boats have been wrecked, this is easier said than done.

Assistance is getting through to the people of southern Bangladesh, who were most affected by the typhoon, but it will take some time before enough aid is in place to help everyone affected.

Save the Children is now operating over several hundred square miles of the Ganges Delta, which is home to over two million people who have lost their homes and most of their possessions. We have established a forward operations centre just north of the affected area and have over 100 teams working to deliver health care, water, hygiene packs, blankets - in fact all of the basic needs of a community.

While needs exist for emergency shelter, food and basic goods, the urgent requirement is for clean water. People are camped out on the sides of roads, embankments - in fact on any high ground they can find. And the only water to drink is the heavily contaminated water lying around them. In one camp I visited today, over 30% of people have diarrhoea and the risk of cholera is increasing by the day.

Each of these temporary sites has to be served with clean water and latrines. We have flown a number of water treatment plants into the affected zone and teams are racing to set them up. The race is also on to get jerry cans of drinking water to the many small isolated communities accessible only by boat. The task of finding them all involved a major exercise of mapping out all the communities in the area. Now, delivery to them is starting - logistics, logistics...

Check back here for regular updates...

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