By Amjad Saleem
I can still vividly recall November 14, 2007, when I was in Uganda attending the Commonwealth People's Forum. My phone rang continuously, and on answering it, I felt the panic of my staff in Bangladesh.
They were frantic as they informed me of a warning that Cyclone Sidr was approaching, and that warning was for Bangladesh. Although cyclones are a frequent and common occurrence in Bangladesh there was something different this time.
The gale-force winds that ravaged Bangladesh on the 15th of November prompted the following statement from Obaid Rahman, head of emergencies at the Muslim Aid UK field office in Bangladesh:
The gale winds have started to hit us, so please make du`aa' [supplication] that we can live through it.
Real Catastrophe
According to the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, on the morning after the carnage it was evident that Bangladesh had experienced its worst cyclone in history, where about nine million people and four major districts were devastated.
When I toured the devastated areas in February 2008, I was struck by how the devastation in the affected areas was similar to that caused by the 2004 tsunami. As far as the eye could see, there were flattened houses and fallen trees as a result of the huge tidal waves that had surged inland.
Stories of the Victims
"The waves came and plucked my child from my hands," said Salma, one of Cyclone Sidr's victims. In fact, the cyclone has added even more to the problems that Salma and her family have had to face. The area where they live in is very wet and muddy because it is right on the floodplain, where the level of the land is lower than that of the surrounding water. Salma's husband, Enayat, is a fisherman who makes a meager living from the river. After the cyclone, Salma and her husband had to make space for those who have lost their homes, and were on handouts from NGOs, such as Muslim Aid and Oxfam.
According to Rahman, the rehabilitation work was difficult, as accessing devastated areas was challenging. The easiest and more convenient access to these areas was by sea or plane, while access by vehicles took at least a day. At the initial stages of the disaster, the roads were washed out; the people had to innovate new ways to access the areas.
Within hours of the disaster, Muslim Aid Bangladesh provided humanitarian aid, including food, health care, medicines, water, sanitation, hygiene, shelters, and various income-generating activities and other types of emergency support. It also implemented schemes for "cleanup" and emergency health support in the main three affected districts.
Isa Abdul-Jolil, head of fundraising at Muslim Aid, was one of the first people from the UK to be on the ground for the support of rehabilitation. He made the following statement after his visit:
The greatest honor by far is being part of the mechanism of support that begins with the small donation of a kind person somewhere in the world and ends with 10 litres of clean drinking water handed to an elderly woman who didn't have any access to water for two days. This is really an honor that cannot be understated.
New Cyclone
In May 2009, Salma and her family were once again apprehensive after cyclone warnings had once again been issued by the Bangladesh Meteorological Department. Cyclone Aila was relatively smaller than Cyclone Sidr; however, it affected areas that were still recovering from Cyclone Sidr.
According to my colleagues' reports from Bangladesh, Alia hit many of the same areas previously struck by Sidr, compromising any existing rehabilitation efforts and making recovery much more difficult. What made the situation worse was that the water level did not recede as quickly as it did with Sidr, and thus many of the survivors remained abandoned in temporary shelters cut off by high water levels caused by the monsoon rains that followed Alia.
Unlike the case with Cyclone Sidr, one of the major problems that accompanied Cyclone Alia was that the international fundraising efforts were very poor. In addition, the worldwide recession at the beginning of 2009 hindered fundraising efforts; many Muslim aid organisations were also struck by "donor fatigue." Moreover, the consecutive natural and man-made disasters that had been hitting many other countries since 2004 also worsened the situation.
"It was so confusing for Muslim Aid to fundraise [for] all these disasters," said Abdul Jolil.
Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any silver lining on this very dark cloud,
and as the intensity of natural disasters increases worldwide, the ever-forward march of climate change will only worsen the situation. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 9 out of 10 disasters are now climate-related, and Bangladesh, being one of the world's poorest countries, is also one of the most susceptible to climate change-related disasters.
Amjad Saleem is a freelance writer and aid worker at Muslim aid Sri Lanka. He graduated from Imperial College with a Masters in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Amjad joined the development field as a volunteer after the tsunami of 2004, where he lost several family members in Sri Lanka . He was appointed Country Director of the Muslim Aid Sri Lanka Field Office in 2006, and has been overseeing work in emergency and long term development. He is currently supervising Muslim Aid’s emergency response in the north. He also simultaneously ran Muslim Aid’s operations in Bangladesh . He can be contacted at youth_campaign@iolteam.com
I can still vividly recall November 14, 2007, when I was in Uganda attending the Commonwealth People's Forum. My phone rang continuously, and on answering it, I felt the panic of my staff in Bangladesh.
They were frantic as they informed me of a warning that Cyclone Sidr was approaching, and that warning was for Bangladesh. Although cyclones are a frequent and common occurrence in Bangladesh there was something different this time.
The gale-force winds that ravaged Bangladesh on the 15th of November prompted the following statement from Obaid Rahman, head of emergencies at the Muslim Aid UK field office in Bangladesh:
The gale winds have started to hit us, so please make du`aa' [supplication] that we can live through it.
Real Catastrophe
According to the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, on the morning after the carnage it was evident that Bangladesh had experienced its worst cyclone in history, where about nine million people and four major districts were devastated.
When I toured the devastated areas in February 2008, I was struck by how the devastation in the affected areas was similar to that caused by the 2004 tsunami. As far as the eye could see, there were flattened houses and fallen trees as a result of the huge tidal waves that had surged inland.
Stories of the Victims
"The waves came and plucked my child from my hands," said Salma, one of Cyclone Sidr's victims. In fact, the cyclone has added even more to the problems that Salma and her family have had to face. The area where they live in is very wet and muddy because it is right on the floodplain, where the level of the land is lower than that of the surrounding water. Salma's husband, Enayat, is a fisherman who makes a meager living from the river. After the cyclone, Salma and her husband had to make space for those who have lost their homes, and were on handouts from NGOs, such as Muslim Aid and Oxfam.
According to Rahman, the rehabilitation work was difficult, as accessing devastated areas was challenging. The easiest and more convenient access to these areas was by sea or plane, while access by vehicles took at least a day. At the initial stages of the disaster, the roads were washed out; the people had to innovate new ways to access the areas.
Within hours of the disaster, Muslim Aid Bangladesh provided humanitarian aid, including food, health care, medicines, water, sanitation, hygiene, shelters, and various income-generating activities and other types of emergency support. It also implemented schemes for "cleanup" and emergency health support in the main three affected districts.
Isa Abdul-Jolil, head of fundraising at Muslim Aid, was one of the first people from the UK to be on the ground for the support of rehabilitation. He made the following statement after his visit:
The greatest honor by far is being part of the mechanism of support that begins with the small donation of a kind person somewhere in the world and ends with 10 litres of clean drinking water handed to an elderly woman who didn't have any access to water for two days. This is really an honor that cannot be understated.
New Cyclone
In May 2009, Salma and her family were once again apprehensive after cyclone warnings had once again been issued by the Bangladesh Meteorological Department. Cyclone Aila was relatively smaller than Cyclone Sidr; however, it affected areas that were still recovering from Cyclone Sidr.
According to my colleagues' reports from Bangladesh, Alia hit many of the same areas previously struck by Sidr, compromising any existing rehabilitation efforts and making recovery much more difficult. What made the situation worse was that the water level did not recede as quickly as it did with Sidr, and thus many of the survivors remained abandoned in temporary shelters cut off by high water levels caused by the monsoon rains that followed Alia.
Unlike the case with Cyclone Sidr, one of the major problems that accompanied Cyclone Alia was that the international fundraising efforts were very poor. In addition, the worldwide recession at the beginning of 2009 hindered fundraising efforts; many Muslim aid organisations were also struck by "donor fatigue." Moreover, the consecutive natural and man-made disasters that had been hitting many other countries since 2004 also worsened the situation.
"It was so confusing for Muslim Aid to fundraise [for] all these disasters," said Abdul Jolil.
Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any silver lining on this very dark cloud,
and as the intensity of natural disasters increases worldwide, the ever-forward march of climate change will only worsen the situation. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 9 out of 10 disasters are now climate-related, and Bangladesh, being one of the world's poorest countries, is also one of the most susceptible to climate change-related disasters.
Amjad Saleem is a freelance writer and aid worker at Muslim aid Sri Lanka. He graduated from Imperial College with a Masters in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Amjad joined the development field as a volunteer after the tsunami of 2004, where he lost several family members in Sri Lanka . He was appointed Country Director of the Muslim Aid Sri Lanka Field Office in 2006, and has been overseeing work in emergency and long term development. He is currently supervising Muslim Aid’s emergency response in the north. He also simultaneously ran Muslim Aid’s operations in Bangladesh . He can be contacted at youth_campaign@iolteam.com
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