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| CYCLONE DISASTER | |
 November 5, 1999 
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PAUL DAVIES: In a country that has become accustomed to nature's extremes, they are calling this the worst storm in living memory. The cyclone lashed India's East Coast with winds of up to 150 miles an hour. Hundreds of fishermen are feared lost at sea. Inland, millions of people have been left homeless by flooding. The rain has stopped now, but whole districts are under water, and many small communities have been washed away. As rural workers try to save what they can, the Indian government has described the cyclone as a national calamity. The after effects of the storm are now hampering relief efforts. The main road from Calcutta to Madras has been severed, and power stations have been put out of operation. Many villages remain cut off from the outside world, in desperate need of food and medicine. JULIET BREMNER: Stranded for six days, the people living in remote rural villages of Orissa have simply had to wait for help to come to them -- communities cut off by the floodwaters that followed a cyclone that's devastated this entire region. Helicopters dropped the emergency supplies from the air. The survivors chase after the desperately needed aid. For those who have survived, the most immediate threat is starvation and dehydration. They snatch at this precious lifeline as it falls from the sky. Where food and fresh water can be delivered by road, the distribution is still chaotic. Thousands of frantic people complain that the meager rations aren't sufficient to feed one person, let alone an entire family. Hungry mobs search the empty lorries, but there simply isn't enough to go round. The poisonous mixture of rotting bodies and stagnant water has raised fears of cholera and typhoid, but medical supplies too are in pitifully short supply. The civilian authorities have been criticized for their slow reaction. Despite the extent of this disaster, it's taken nearly a week for the rescue effort to get into full swing. JULIAN MANYON: As the floodwaters finally go down, smashed villages are laid bare, revealing the appalling distraction left by 180-mile-an-hour winds and the great tides that followed. The wreckage stretches for mile after mile with dead animals littering the fields, sometimes alongside the bodies of their owners. Survivors huddle together on every patch of raised ground. Our pilot, like the army flight crews, was extremely reluctant to land, fearing that the helicopter would be mobbed by starving people. In one small town, the people begged us to come down. But at the last moment, the pilot decided that the crowd was simply too large. Finally we landed on the outskirts of a small village and people rushed towards us. Anxious, almost hysterical, they told us that all their food supplies were destroyed by the flooding. We were the first outsiders they had seen since the cyclone struck. SPOKESPERSON: We didn't eat any food for four or five days. JULIAN MANYON: You haven't eaten for four or five days? SPOKESPERSON: Yes, sir. JULIAN MANYON: Throughout this devastated areas, there are literally thousands of small communities in the same desperate position as this one. Even though the floodwaters are starting to recede, the people who have survived here are desperately short of food and of fresh water. The government has promised aid and occasionally military helicopters fly over, but the food for the moment, just isn't getting through. We found the same hopelessness at the other place where we were able to touch down -- a shanty town in the port of Paradiq on the coast. Government helicopters have brought some rice to the town but almost none ever it has so far reached this district. Instead, people are trying to dry out their old rice stocks, which lay for days under filthy floodwaters. The result is illness among the survivors. PATRICK FULLER, International Red Cross: The conditions are very unsanitary. We're seeing increasing number of gastroenteritis cases being admitted into the hospital. But also with the amount of stagnant water still around in slightly outlying areas, we're seeing increasing numbers of malaria coming in. JULIAN MANYON: People are struggling to rebuild their lives but with no resources and against heavy odds. We were told that the cyclone killed more than 100 people in this district alone. Now there's anger that the government seems to be doing so little to help while people are dying. SPOKESMAN: In the morning, one child of two, three years is dead. JULIAN MANYON: A two-year-old child died here this morning. SPOKESMAN: He suffered from diarrhea. Now in the morning, 5:30, He died. JULIAN MANYON: The effects of this disaster will be felt for years. The seawater that flooded inland will make the fields infertile for at least two seasons President -- and that, in a land where farmers always face a struggle to survive. The people of this battered province need help now and they will go on needing it for sometime. JIM LEHRER: Officials say the final death toll could reach 10,000. |
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