Cyclone Sidr, a powerful Category 4 hurricane, slammed into Bangladesh today with winds of nearly 150 mph and a storm surge of at least 20 feet. The only good news is that the storm hit further east than Cyclone Bola, which killed as many as 500,000 in 1970.
Still, a storm similar to Sidr in 1991 killed 200,000.
Sidr advanced toward Bangladesh relatively slowly, giving government authorities a few days to evacuate as many residents as possible from low-lying areas, so there is hope that the death toll will be far smaller than in previous tropical disasters.
Expect the worst, however. Even in the best of times, communications are slow in that part of the world. By tomorrow we are likely to be learning of yet another collossal catastrophe on the coast of the Bay of Bengal.
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