Economist

The cyclone of the night of November 12th-13th did not catch Pakistan’s weathermen unaware.

The day before it devastated a 250- mile coastal swathe along the Bay of Bengal, observatories and radar stations at Cox’s Bazar, Chittagong and Dacca were doing their job.

Our Pakistan correspondent reports that meteorologists issued a “hurricane danger” warning 16 hours in advance and a “hurricane great danger” warning eight hours later. Why didn’t any body listen? Partly it was the story of the boy who cried wolf. Three weeks earlier, on October 23rd, a cyclone of lesser intensity had hit the same region. It was preceded by storm warnings interrupting radio broadcasts and the evacuation of coastal residents to higher ground. In the event the cyclone affected only a small area; the number of people killed, 300, was small by the standards of past local disasters. When the warnings were given on November 12th, the people who had left their homes the previous time decided not to be bothered again.

But there was also official complacency and neglect. After a satellite picture showed the storm approaching from 250 miles away, warnings went out in two forms: signals to ships giving the force number of the cyclone - 10, the maximum, at Chalna and 9 at Chittagong - and a description to the population. But as the tidal wave was surging towards the offshore islands the force number of the cyclone was dropped from broadcasts on the assumption that ships had already taken shelter. Warnings were restricted to normal weather reports and regular programmes were not interrupted. The result was that many East Pakistanis did not take them seriously.

The speed of the cyclone was unprecedented; after changing direction and gathering strength, it hit the East Bengal coast 24 hours earlier than expected. But even given this element of surprise, there is no explanation for the meteorologists’ failure to calculate the height and intensity of the tidal wave which accompanied it; the seismographic station at Chittagong is equipped to record signals produced by surface waves. If the tidal wave had been forecast, the casualties might have been reduced, according to one Pakistani estimate, by half. Twelve hours after the wave struck, when huge numbers of people were already dead, weather experts at Dacca and Chittagong dismissed a wireless description of the catastrophe from the flooded islands of Hatia as “a fabrication.” They were under the erroneous impression that low tide set in by nightfall. The fact was that the full moon had pulled a high tide into the Bay of Bengal.

Now everybody is trying to pass the buck - the meteorologists to the provincial government, the government to local agencies and local agencies to the observatories. At least some of those guilty of dereliction of duty seem to be sheltering behind the pretext that they were absent in the hour before the cyclone struck because it was time for them to break their day¬long Ramadan fast. Only 24 hours after the cyclone hit, the scale of the disaster was known. On Saturday morning one Dacca newspaper called it “the worst disaster of the century.” Guesses put the death toll as high as 200,000 even on the 14th. But confirmation and verification of the death tolls took a long time. On the 13th the official figure was 50. From then on it mounted rapidly to the current official estimate of 175,000 deaths. As the official figure slowly came to reflect reality. West Pakistan and the rest of the world slowly realised the enormity of what had happened.

The initial gift from the British government was a mere £ 30,000. This was later raised to £1 million. A published appeal is expected to bring in another £1 million, making it the most successful relief drive ever held in Britain. Once Pakistan had appealed to the League of Red Cross Societies and the United Nations, the response was generous, particularly from the United States, China and India. The first problem was getting the aid to East Pakistan fast enough. The aid has mostly been of the right sort; and a great deal of it is already in Dacca, the capital of East Pakistan. But it was a long time getting there partly because of landing delays at Dacca airport. The Pakistan authorities at first refused to cancel commercial flights.

There is enough in Dacca now to feed, clothe and care for all the surviving victims. But so little of it has been getting out to them that the Red Cross held up supplies last weekend until the bottleneck was cleared. Distribution of relief to the stricken delta has been the big headache. The few roads that did exist are now covered with soft silt, and almost all the boats that used to ply the waterways of the delta were smashed by the cyclone. The great need has been for helicopters and shallow-draught boats - neither of which the Pakistani army or air force seems to have had available.

A military regime should have one great advantage in such a crisis: it should be able to get trained men, and their transport, moving quickly. But for a whole week the five infantry divisions in East Pakistan were only partly mobilised. When the army did receive orders to move, on November 16th, 5,000 men went into action inoculating survivors against cholera and typhoid, burying the dead, and establishing communications. But coordination between the army and the civil authorities, and the Pakistan Red Cross, seems to have been bad. Some British rescue vessels spent several idle days in Dacca while the Red Cross and the army argued about who should man them. On Tuesday this week there was an attempt to give the army a bigger role by replacing the civilian relief commissioner by a soldier. That should help.

What has puzzled many people is why, though the Pakistan air force has 25 helicopters, only one has been airlifting supplies to the victims. Admittedly most of them can take only light loads. But they still could have been useful. The East Pakistan relief commissioner has claimed that the Indians would not give clearance for the helicopters to fly over India from West Pakistan, where most of the Pakistani air force is stationed. The Indians say they were never asked for clearance. The probable answer is that because the Pakistani helicopters are military ones, the Pakistanis did not want to let them land on Indian territory - as they would have had to do. Now that British helicopters and assault boats are operating from ships in the Bay of Bengal, and American helicopters have begun to arrive, the relief distribution should at last get under way. One can only hope that a substantial number of the survivors did not die of hunger, disease or cold before relief reached them.

President Yahya Khan arrived in Dacca on Wednesday for a two-day helicopter tour of the delta, with an election due in less than two weeks, the government in Rawalpindi must be seen to be doing as much as it can for the east wing of the country. Increased autonomy for east Pakistan was a major election issue before the cyclone. Now East Pakistani political leaders are accusing the government of incompetence in relief distribution and “sinister attempts to play down ... the single greatest havoc in human history.” Eleven parties are demanding a postponement of the election. The Awami League, which is expected to win a majority of votes in East Pakistan, has not yet committed itself on the timing of the elections. But the pro-Peking National Awami Party has told its candidate to pull out. A postponement of the election could mean disaster for some parties which are on the verge of bankruptcy. But nobody is thinking very clearly in East Pakistan today.