NEW DELHI, May 27 (AlertNet) Â? Millions of people in India and Bangladesh have been temporarily displaced and are in desperate need of water, food and adequate shelter after a severe tropical storm struck the region, aid workers and officials said.
Bangladesh's low-lying coastal belt and parts of eastern India were hit on Monday by Cyclone Aila which was accompanied by tidal surges and flooding.
Packing winds of up to 100 kph (60 mph), the storm has killed at least 210 people and injured over 6,400 in both countries.
While hundreds of thousands of residents were evacuated to cyclone shelters, schools, colleges and other buildings, the high winds and floods destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes, ravaged crops, killed livestock and damaged roads and bridges.
The Bangladeshi government says almost four million people have been affected by the disaster, with at least 100 dead and hundreds more still missing.
While in India's West Bengal state, authorities say that nearly 2.3 million people have been affected.
One million are believed to be displaced in India's Sundarban islands, a network of low-lying islands in the Bay of Bengal which is already threatened by climate change.
"The situation is particularly bad in the Sundarbans as it was directly in the path of the cyclone," said Manab Ray, Save the Children India's programme manager in West Bengal.
"Thousands of mud and thatch homes have been washed away and the government has set up over a hundred camps and shelters in the state, where over 40,000 people are being accommodated."
DEVASTATION
Officials however say most damage has been caused in flood-prone Bangladesh.
"The damage is very large as when landfall occurred, it was high tide, so tidal surges were very extreme and powerful," said a disaster management official, who did not want to be named.
Relief workers currently assessing the situation in the field say there has been widespread devastation in the worst affected districts of Satkhira, Bagerhat, Barguna and Khulna.
Preliminary information from the government's latest situation report states that around 175,000 families have lost their homes, while another 270,000 homes have been partially damaged.
It is estimated that 80,000 acres of rice paddy and other crops have been destroyed and about 250,000 acres partially destroyed. Over 40,000 poultry and livestock have also been killed.
The government's report says infrastructure has also been seriously affected Â? thousands of kilometres of roads and around 40 bridges have been damaged or completely destroyed.
Even embankments could not stop the tidal surges and flooding, say officials, adding that around 550 km of embankments will need to be repaired or replaced.
LOST LIVELIHOODS
As water levels slowly recede, thousands of families in both countries have begun returning to find their homes and fields either washed away or half-submerged in water.
Search and rescue operations are underway and both government and aid workers have begun distributing immediate relief supplies such as water purification tablets and dried food including rice and lentils to affected populations.
"There are just a few agencies bringing relief at the moment Â? there is a desperate need for basically everything from survival kits to clean drinking water," said John Gomes, communications officer with World Vision in Dhaka.
Aid workers in Bangladesh say most of the affected populations are poor fishermen and farmers whose livelihoods have been wiped out.
The area was severely hit by Cyclone Sidr in November 2007, which killed 3,500 people and caused damaged worth $1.7 billion.
Relief workers currently in the field say the situation is devastating for villagers, given that they had not fully recovered from the impact of Sidr.
"It's unfortunate as people here were just beginning to get their lives back after Sidr, and now this has happened," said Sanjida Sabrina Tawhid, communications officer for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
"While Sidr was a more powerful cyclone and killed more people, the damage caused by Aila is probably just as much or more."
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