Major Humanitarian Disaster Likely To Unfold Tomorrow

Cyclone Sidr--the Indian Ocean equivalent of a hurricane--is bearing down on the low-lying coast of Bangladesh with 150 mph winds and a potentially enormous storm surge.

The last time a storm of this size--Cyclone Bola in 1970--struck Bangladesh, several hundred thousand people died. Unfortunately, Bangladesh is not much better prepared today than it was then.

The best info we could find on Sidr was on The Weather Underground website. Their tracking model has the storm roaring ashore sometime in the middle of the night between Thursday and Friday in Bangladesh, which means probably during our afternoon tomorrow (Thursday) (we are about 11 hours behind Bangladesh).

Parts of India and Myanmar (Burma) are also likely to be affected severely.

This could be worse than the Indonesian tsunami. We hope the storm will weaken and perhaps take a turn toward a region not as low-lying as Bangladesh, but we fear for the worst. Our prayers go out to the people facing this threat with their limited resources.