Low tech early warning saves thousands of lives in Bangladesh

A simple early warning system that used local volunteers shouting through megaphones to warn people about the impending cyclone saved thousands of lives when Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh last week, and the system proved so effective that it might even become a model for other countries.

"What they did is brilliant," said Maryam Golnaraghi, chief of disaster risk reduction at the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in Geneva. She estimated that the roughly 3,000 death-toll (still rising) might have been "hundreds of thousands" higher had early warning systems not been in place. "They have rolled out a very cost effective, very sustainable mechanism that is even inspiring policy makers in developing countries."

A cyclone of a similar magnitude that hit Bangladesh in 1991 killed 190,000 people. An even stronger one in 1970 left 300,000 dead and was the trigger for the early warning mechanism being put in place. "Without this system, the losses would have been as bad as the cyclone in 1991," said Salvano Briceno, director of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.

The authorities in Bangladesh first got news of the impending crisis 72 hours before the category four tropical cyclone, which was then still forming over the Bay of Bengal, made landfall. The WMO's global cyclone observatory started feeding data to its regional outpost at the Indian Meteorological Office in New Delhi. The message was relayed from New Delhi to the Bangladesh authorities in the capital Dhaka, who passed it on to the local Red Crescent office.

From there, to get the message out to the 15 of Bangladesh's 64 districts which were affected, a network of 40,000 Red Crescent volunteers, who had been trained specifically for this task, were mobilised. They cycled around the country, using megaphones to order residents into the 1,800 cyclone shelters and 440 flood shelters. By the time Sidr slammed into the coast on 15 November, around two million people were already sheltered.

This story, abridged from a story prepared by IRIN, was included in the OneWorld Aid Weekly Digest.

 


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