"We have lost everything," local farmer Moshararf Hossain told Prasad. "We have nowhere to go."
The cyclone swept in from the Bay of Bengal and roared across the southwestern coast late Thursday with driving rain and high waves, leveling thousands of flimsy huts and destroying crops and fish farms in 15 coastal districts, officials and witnesses said.
Sidr spawned a 4-foot (1.2-meter) storm surge that swept through low-lying areas and some offshore islands, leaving them underwater, said Nahid Sultana, an official of the Ministry of Food and Disaster Management.
At least 650,000 coastal villagers had fled to shelters where they were given emergency rations, said senior government official Ali Imam Majumder in Dhaka.
Volunteers from international aid agencies, including the UN World Food Program, Save the Children and the U.S.-based Christian aid group World Vision, have joined the relief effort.
World Vision is putting together seven-day relief packages for families that will include rice, oil, sugar, salt, candles, and blankets, according to Vince Edwards, the agency's Bangladesh director.
The World Food Program was sending rations for up to 400,000, Holmes, the UN official, added.
Edwards said debris from the storm has blocked roads and rivers, making it difficult to reach all the areas that had been hit.
"There has been lot of damage to houses made of mud and bamboo, and about 60 to 80 percent of the trees have been uprooted," Edwards said.
An elephant was pressed into service to help clear a road in Barishal, 75 miles (120 kilometers) south of Dhaka, pushing a stranded bus and moving a toppled tree. (See photo.)
By late evening Friday operations had resumed at the country's two main seaports—Chittagong and Mongla—and authorities said airports were up in Chittagong and Dhaka.
The storm spared India's eastern coast. Weather officials had forecast only heavy rain and flooding in West Bengal and Orissa states.
Bangladesh, a low-lying delta nation, is prone to seasonal cyclones and floods that cause huge losses of life and property.
In 1970 between 300,000 and 500,000 people were killed by a cyclone, and some 140,000 died in 1991. Dozens of other cyclones have taken more than 60,000 lives since 1960.
After the 1991 cyclone foreign donors and Bangladeshi government agencies began building emergency shelters—concrete boxes raised on pillars, each able to hold anywhere from a few hundred to 3,000 people. More than 2,000 shelters have since been built.
The Bangladeshi coastal area is famous for the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans (see photo), a world heritage site that is home to rare Bengal tigers.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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