Bangladesh’s forgotten cyclone leaves wretched legacy

At 72, Bangladeshi honey-hunter Mohsan Gazi has seen plenty of bad storms and hard times, but the stoical septuagenarian says nothing came close to Cyclone Aila that struck in May last year.

A year after the disaster, Gazi’s community of some 500 families still live in a squalid, makeshift camp on a narrow spit of land surrounded by salt water. They cannot farm or fish and have no fresh water.

“I have lived here all my life. There were big storms that I remember in the 1970s and in 1988, but not like this, with this one we lost everything — our water, our crops, our land, our houses and the embankments,” Gazi told AFP. “When the rains come, we will be at the mercy of God,” he said.

Cyclone Aila slammed into southern Bangladesh on May 26, 2009, and while the initial death toll was low — less than 300 people were killed, compared to 4,000 by Cyclone Sidr in 2007.

AFP