Word: urirchar
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...wind and water gathered force, however, Yakub Ali knew that something ominous was on the way. Hurrying back to his homestead, he awoke his wife, his ten-year-old son and his younger brother and urged them to come along to Urirchar's only concrete building, a two-story Forestry Department complex a little more than half a mile away. By then the tide had begun to rise. Yakub and his family started running; all around them people were racing for safety...
...same sad question haunted all of Urirchar after the night of the raging elements. While the sea crashed over the 20-sq.-mi. island, whose highest point is only 10 ft. above sea level, families were torn asunder. In desperation, people clung to the rafters of the Forestry Department building or to trees or to anything else not swept away by the terrifying storm. "I survived by holding on to a branch," said Akmal Hossain, a 42-year-old farmer. "Everything happened after midnight, and before I could realize the gravity of the situation, water and water engulfed the island...
...seven hours, through the dead of night, the screaming winds whipped across the Bay of Bengal at up to 100 m.p.h., pushing before them a thunderous storm surge that crested as high as 50 ft. On Char Clarke, an islet seven miles southwest of Urirchar, Ali Ahmed, 46, first heard the wind gusting violently during the early part of the night and saw the mangroves swaying wildly. As island elders huddled around a radio, trees and whole huts began crashing to the earth around them. Finally the huge tidal surge ravaged the settlement, submerging all except those who managed...
...murderous storm had headed farther north, the afflicted area was stripped clean. Thatched huts and small shops, animals and people had been swept beneath the waves; thousands of fishing boats had vanished. Whole settlements had been swamped or washed into the sea. Across the length and breadth of Urirchar there hung an eerie silence, broken now and then by the wails of survivors. Only a few houses remained, among them the Forestry Department building. Of some 10,000 residents of the islet, mostly peasant farmers and a few shopkeepers, up to 7,000 were dead or missing. The flat...
...wake of the tragedy, the entire country was stunned into shock and silence. Proclaiming a day of national mourning, Bangladesh's President, Lieut. General Hussain Mohammad Ershad, postponed a planned state visit to China and hurried to Urirchar. After traveling through winds so fierce that his helicopter had to land before continuing, the President gave drinking water and biscuits to a few children, handed out clothes and looked on as bodies were buried. He could find no words adequate to the tragedy. "The devastation," he said simply, "is beyond description...