DACCA, Pakistan, Dec. 1— Reliable reports indicate that East Pakistan's storm‐warning system, a limited one at best, was not put in motion properly when the devastating cyclone struck on Nov. 12.

The storm's path and intensity were known days in advance. Had proper warning been given over the local radio, tens of thousands might have been able to save themselves merely by lashing themselves to palm trees—which is how many were saved at the last minute though they had no warning.

For many, no warning would have helped. There was simply no high place to run to, no building with a second story to huddle in. And the women and children had no strength to hang onto trees through the long hours of the cyclone's night.

In some villages not a single child is left.

The storm also killed most of the livestock, which did the plowing as well as providing food. The rice crop is destroyed, although many villagers are desperately trying to rescue some of it from under the gray mud and wash it clean enough to eat in the badly polluted water.

Another crop will not be possible for almost a year. Until then the survivors will have to be fed as refugees, from relief stocks and foreign aid.

This year's harvest was only two weeks away when the cyclone struck, and the crop was going to be a bumper one.

This cyclone belt is vastly different from regions in the United States like Louisiana and Mississippi that lie in the path of the frequent Gulf of Mexico hurricanes. A hurricane last year, for example, swept inland with winds of 250 miles an hour, 100 miles an hour stronger than those in the storm here. About 200 people were killed and 1.000 injured. In the Pakistan disaster the official toll is over 175,000, and many more people may have been killed.

`Just One Big City’

The reasons for the lower American toll are basic: an efficient early‐warning system, a good road network for evacuation from rural areas, and good dike‐protection systems around densely populated centers from which evacuation is difficult if not impossible.

In East Pakistan the warning system is inadequate. The few roads that exist are primitive and, worse still, there is virtually no motorized transport.

There are no compact urban areas on the delta that might he protected like an American coastal town, but the rural flats are as heavily populated as some cities.

“It's just one big city,” a despairing flood‐control engineer said, “and it's impossible to protect adequately. There's no place like it in the world.”

Although it is believed to be next to impossible to build earthen embankments high enough — say 35 feet — to defend against a cyclone that carries with it a 20‐foot tidal wave, it is not impossible to build embankments against normal storms and flooding.

Two thousands miles of such embankments about 17 feet high have been raised in the coastal areas—a fraction of what is needed. Normal high tide reaches 14 feet, so the structures provide a vital margin of protection. Those few areas and islands having embankments suffered far less damage in the cyclone than the open areas.

The topographical obstacles to construction are immense. Most of East Pakistan is deltaic, that is, a spidery network of rivers and streams with crumbly soil difficult for road and rail way construction. There are no rocks.

And then there are the annual monsoon rains, which over flow the rivers and flood the land from June to October.

In October or November the rains cease, and it is as though a plug has been pulled from a bathtub. By February drought irrigation is the only way to get a reliable crop.