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The Nor’wester Season
The Kalboishakhi or nor’wester season ts already here without waiting for the calendar to green-signal its arrival. And in its usual manner it has already taken half a dozen lives and mowed down thousands of houses. Country boats have Kie down and fishermen lost. Most of the devas-
lon has occurred in various upazilas of Siraj-ganj. As it is. this is rather a low-profile entry for the cyclonic visitation which, one is sure, will spread to numerous other areas in no time And if we are again unlucky another Demra or Beuta or Saturia will be in the bill.
In fact, cyclonic storms such as Kalboishakhi' are only as fearsome as the devastations they wreak. When we look for ways to face up to late-in-the-day lashings we do search for ways to minimise the toll — of life and property and suffering — they exact. Japan coped with its earthquakes by not attempting to reduce their incidence but by going for quakeproof housing — with RCC piles going deep into the earth and all the walls made of paper. There's a lesson for us. Our housing practices in the villages must be made to respond to the challenges posed by the nor’wester. There's no use prescribing pucca structures to replace the bamboo-and-thatch things for in that the doctor will be needed to deliver the medicine. It is sad to observe how little have our engineers and architects and housing experts have worked on developing houses that cost as much as the average villager can afford and still stand a better chance in case of a Kalboishakhi. Of course, this is not unusual. In education and medicine, in administration and the Judicial system, in industry and technology little have been done to adapt things to respond to native needs and challenges.
. The corrugated Iron sheet roof, tln-roof In common parlance. Is the most popular roofing material in Bangladesh. One effective way to minimise threat to life during a raging Kalboishakhi is switch over to roofing by material other than C.I. sheet which, during the storm, flies like a sheet of paper and cuts all living things into ghastly death. The villagers know it full well and yet would not go back to the safe thatched roof mainly for expense's sake. The indigenous thing has to be repaired quite often and changed altogether for new in a matter of years. The Tin' roof lasts an eternity. The reason is no cheap substitute for C.I. sheet is anywhere in sight.
There is a new threat to life from storms. Electricity nowadays is travelling to remote villages. It is being carried over miles and miles of transmission grid string over all kinds of poles. The new electric poles, running into thousands, are not always secured to ground the way they should. In case of a strong Kalboishakhi any number of them can and do fall. Even if people are not hit by such falling poles the grounded live wires pose a real threat to life. In this year's first two or three storms this has already been established as a danger. The R.E.B. must wake up to the danger of its poles erected to less than specified standards. And R.E.B. would be well-advised to change their specifications in the height of the new danger.
Early and dependable warning of cyclonic strikes can help reduce death on our rivers and lake-size natural reservoirs. Unappreciated by many, lives lost in the Bay are caused mostly by Kalboishakhi-type cyclones. Early warning can inhibit taking to the sea and voyaging out on the rivers and heels'. In the villages they have their own way of knowing a malignant wind build-up — but this is — developed empirically over centuries — short-notice stuff and is hardly helpful. Predicting a nasty formation through remote sensing by satellites can give people more than a day's notice. For early warning to effectively cut on nor'wester deaths, our meteorological establishment will have to be treated as a more important undertaking than at present done. The organisation must have access to the state-of-the-act gadgetry and know-how and that must be matched with efficiency.
Good follow-up service can also take away much of the sting of a nor'wester. We would do well to have a permanent 'disaster' cell with a command over a generous supply of relief materials and assistance funds to rush to affected areas— as well as medical help and doctors specially trained for such a Job.