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Surviving Cyclone Sidr

Save the Children is responding to the needs of tens of thousands of children in Bangladesh. This account, taken by Bridget Steffen, a member of Save the Children's emergency's staff, is a poignant account of how 3 children from one family survived the cyclone and are slowly piecing back their lives.
December 12, 2007

 The broken brick path is still lined with cyclone debris. The wooden roof of a hut lies astride its flattened walls, half a fishing boat pokes out of a pool of brackish water, and the flip flops that peep from among branches and pieces of corrugated iron which have long lost their pairs will probably never be worn by their original owners again. The smell is still with us - a stark reminder of the yet-undiscovered animals or people beneath the wreckage. We are led on by a young woman from Southkali community - one of the first and worst-hit areas of Bangladesh because of its close proximity to the sea. The tidal wave had swept five metres above the area where we were walking, transporting everything - homes, roads, animals, possessions and people - in its surge. We passed 12 freshly-dug graves on the road's embankment - the only areas high enough to escape the current water logging because of the tidal surge, and cleared enough of debris for people to be able to dig in the earth. Blue plastic sheeting covered the tiny graves, each holding the bodies of several children killed in the storm. It is estimated that from the total number of people killed during the cyclone, 80% were children.

 But there were others who survived against all the odds. We were going to visit a family which had been severely ripped apart in the storm, and somehow cobbled back together with those who had survived. We reached an area filled with tiny makeshift shelters hardly big enough for two or three people to lie down in. Our family had built theirs out of two pieces of old corrugated iron leant together like to tent, one end covered with cloth and the other end open. Inside was a rolled up blanket, and a couple of empty jerry cans, and four squatting figures. There was hardly space to squeeze inside to join the three siblings - a girl of five; two boys aged 12 and 22, and their uncle - a relative by marriage to their mother's sister.

Each seemed to be existing in their own worlds despite the closeness with which they had been thrown together. The little girl did not utter a word, and just watched us with large eyes. The little girl's brothers told her story, interwoven with their own experiences of that Thursday night when the storm struck. They had all been at home with their mother and baby brother, and their father was out fishing. They had stayed tight together as the wind grew ever stronger, but when the tidal surge hit, they were swallowed up by the water and scattered in all directions.

12-year old Resaoul found himself swimming with no land in sight - everywhere was water. A piece of corrugated iron sheeting came flying through the air and hit him, fracturing his foot and badly wounding both legs. He was swimming for another 2 hours before government boats came and rescued him with ropes. He was bandaged with towels, given a quilt and taken to the ruined police station, but he continued to shiver all night.

The oldest boy, Khokon, managed to hold onto the top of a tree - that tree over there with almost no branches left that we could see from the opening in the corrugated iron tent. But he fell, and swam till he managed to hold onto another and then another. Then Khokon saw his little sister Sonia unconscious in the water. He took her on his shoulders and swam for what felt like seven hours without finding land. At last he too found Resaoul at the police station, and the next day the three of them made their way back through the wreckage, bodies and devastation to their ruined house on foot. As with so many other fishermen caught in the cyclone at sea, their father never returned from his fishing. The three of them spent two days searching for their mother and little brother, until they found their bodies under the wreckage of their house. Now they live with their uncle Kadar who lost his own wife in the disaster. He has lost everything and has no way to support them except for the relief handouts they receive from the government and NGOs in the area. Kadar doesn't know what his fate will be - he hopes to somehow find work in order to survive and support his new ‘family'.

The danger for these and other children who have lost their parents or primary care-givers, is that their surrogate carers - unable to support the children - resort to selling them into child labour or sex trafficking. The imperative to register and monitor the where-abouts of such children, and to provide extra support to them and their caregivers, is crucial in the immediate aftermath of such a disaster. This can prevent things like trafficking and potentially protect children from other harm such as domestic violence and sexual abuse by reducing the levels of stress faced by the family as a whole.

Sonia's voice remained silent as the story came to a close. I can only hope that gradually - through creating a supportive environment around her - her words may return. But it will take even longer before, little-by-little, her scars may begin to heal.