A TRAIL OF TRAGEDY
It came without warning. Ferocious and violent. It lasted for just a few very terrifying minutes…and then it was gone. The unreal calm that followed was in utter contrast to the devastation it left in its wake. In time, the calm was pierced by the cry of an infant. She was fortunate. She had survived. She had not been sucked into the vortex of the debris created by one of the most wrathful of weather monsters: the tornado.
Just before sunset on 13 May this year, the tornado roared into the Tangail-Jamalpur area of central Bangladesh, some 100 km north of Dhaka. It was the worst in recent memory. Standing crops were snatched into the air. Houses were smashed, their tin roofs pulled into all directions. Trees were uprooted. Power connections were snapped.
The ´twister´ which ripped across the countryside at a mind-boggling 200 kms per hour, reduced 80 villages to indistinguishable rubble. Raging debris killed over 700 men, women and children. More than 34,000 were wounded. Crushed limbs, skull fractures, lacerations and contusions were the commonest injuries. In some cases, rice grains had flown with such intense speed that they had punctured and penetrated human flesh like so many thousand stumpy needles. Almost everyone in the 15 km path of the tornado received some injury—major or minor.