Bashir Ahmed, a fisherman at Swarankhola in southern Bagerhat, had gone to a shelter centre along with wife and two children before a deadly hurricane, christened Sidr, battered Bangladesh on Thursday.
He returned home on Sunday to find that the house they had lived in for generations had been destroyed, trees uprooted and fishing boat missing.
“We'll have to live under the sky,” he said. “I don't have means to build another house and buy a fishing boat.”
He is not the only one at Swarankhola, one of the worst-hit islands in the Bay of Bengal, to tell such stories. Most people on the island have lost everything they had. Scores of bodies, recovered from sea and debris, were buried in mass graves on Sunday, but coffins were not easily available.
“I need a coffin for my nephew who died in the storm,” Abdul Haq Hawladar of North Southkhali approached journalists as their boat arrived at Swarankhola. “There is no coffin here.”
People of Bagerhat say scores of their relatives, who had not gone to shelter centres, are still missing. “We were stunned to see so many bodies,” says Mujibur Rahman.
“The hurricane has taken away our dear ones and left us nowhere. We're looking for our relatives.”
Toll touches 2,900 The toll of the dead is, meanwhile, rising with Bagerhat in the lead. More than 1,000 people have been killed in Bagerhat. Officials say the death toll has risen to 2,900, but unofficial count put the figure at 3,200.
Government officials and aid workers are toiling hard to recover more bodies. The government claimed that it dispatched food to affected areas, but people in Bagerhat complained that the supply of relief materials was not adequate.
The hurricane that hit southern Bangladesh with a speed of more than 220 km per hour seems to have left a trail of devastation in the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest.
Local people say uprooted trees and destroyed houses on the edge of the forest are reminiscent of the devastation brought to the forest by the 1988 storm. Environmentalists fear immense loss to the Sundarbans and its wildlife, as the brunt of the hurricane was borne by the forest.
They apprehend that many tigers, deer, crocodiles, wild bears, king cobras and monkeys might have been washed away. Nine tigers and several hundred deer were perished in the 1988 storm accompanied by six-foot high tidal surge.
Foreign assistance
Bangladesh has not yet asked the international community to provide assistance. Adviser for Foreign Affairs Iftikhar Choudhury said they are still assessing the loss, and will ask the UN system to extend help.
The United States, the European Union and Germany, besides the United Nations have, meanwhile, announced assistance in cash and kind to meet immediate needs.
