Talk:1970 Bhola cyclone

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Contents 1 Name 2 Worst recorded disaster? 3 track 4 Todo 5 Sleeping through a Cyclone? 6 Todo 7 Todo (part 3)

[edit] Name

The title of this article may be wrong. Can anyone confirm that this disaster is most generally known as the 'Bhola cyclone'. I'm not finding many Google references to it under that name, and the cyclone + tidal wave affected a much larger area. In the meantime, I've moved to page to '1970 Bhola cyclone' to conform to the style of other natural disaster articles and because cyclones in the area of the Bay of Bengal occur nearly every year. -- Solipsist 09:55, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Worst recorded disaster?

I cut this text:

and possibly the worst recorded natural disaster in terms of the number of lives lost

because [1] refers to three earthquakes with higher numbers of dead (the source given there is Catalog of significant earthquakes 2000 BC–1979, including Quantative Casualties and Damage, NOAA World Data Center, 1981). If famines and epidemics count as natural disasters — which they do according to the Wikipedia article — then there have been many much more deadly than any earthquake or storm. Gdr 17:49, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)

Probably a good call. After writing this, I noticed Tangshan earthquake on Wikipedia:Collaboration_of_the_week, which claims similar official death toll, but a higher maximum estimate. One of the main reasons that unofficial death tolls can be a lot higher is that there is no recent census to know how many people (especially children) were previously living in the area. It would be impossible to know which one was actually worse, so the claim shouldn't be made - or if it is, it should be fully qualified.

I removed a similar statement from a link to this page, but forgot that it was still in the article. -- Solipsist 19:28, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I removed the link again. The tsunami/earthquake has little to do with the Bhola cyclone. Yes, in one more lives were lost, and there was some misreporting, but that misreporting was not in this article (or no longer is).

Think of it from the point of view of someone who reads the article. Out of the blue, there's a link to an earthquake with no explicit relevancy to the article. If the earthquake was misreported as the largest disaster, then a relevant comment debunking it should be placed in that article, not this one.Beetle B. 01:02, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree there shouldn't be an out-of-context link. Rather we should include a link in context, in the article. I did this by adding a "fully qualified" claim of deadliness. The wording I used is identical to what the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake article uses. Jdorje 03:04, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Side note: this "see also" is also in the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone article. I'm pretty sure I put it there when writing the article, mindlessly copying this article. Jdorje 05:08, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

The official figure for death toll is 500,000, according to Banglapedia (see [2]). I updated the figure in the article. I agree that the real number is not known and can be higher, the region being one of the most densely populated in the world. --Ragib 04:01, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

This brings the question: official according to who? It should be either the government (except that government doesn't exist anymore) or some world organization (UN? WHO?), right? Banglapedia may be reliable (I don't know) but they are not an official source. Can you find an official source for the number? Jdorje 05:08, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Banglapedia is the "official encyclopedia of Bangladesh". So, I guess this should be an official source. I did a quick google search, and found several book references, here is an example: Natural Hazards: by Graham A Tobin, Guilford Press, 1997 ISBN1572300620. This states on page 11: "Certainly , many of the 300,000 to 500,000 who died in Bangladesh in 1970 were victims of seawater". Here is a news item in BBC, stating the death toll as 500,000. And here is another one from weather.com . The Straight Dope site puts the number to 300,000. I'm not sure if Bangladesh Govt websites has the figure... I'll have to check. --Ragib 05:46, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

I presume the figure of 500,000 made it the deadliest, and not the "other estimates"? Beetle B. 23:26, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Any of the estimates would make it the deadliest cyclone. The next most deadly tropical cyclone is the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone which killed about 150,000. See List_of_wars_and_disasters_by_death_toll#Hurricane_and_cyclone (the #2 entry there is flat-out wrong). There is uncertainty about which of the natural disasters is deadliest. Also there's the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake which (if the numbers are to be believed) killed close to a million people - hence the "in modern times" qualifier (and this should probably also be qualified "as of 2005"). Jdorje 23:58, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the 1931 Huang He flood is generally considered to be the worst disaster in recorded history. At least from everything I've read. jcomp489

Indeed...along with several other Yellow River floods that are larger than any other natural disasters. I guess the question is: is the "in modern times" qualifier sufficient to exclude them? Jdorje 16:04, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

The question remains, how do you classify events. That is, do you consider flood a single event, or do you consider the flood and any resulting famine separate events. The thing about earthquake, Tsunami, Cyclones etc is that these are single events that kills most people instantly, while in floods, people mostly die of famine and other after effects, not the flood itself. If the flood is a flash flood like the breaking of a dam, then many people may die instantly. But I think "death by disaster" refers to people dying thru the disaster directly, rather than thru the after effects. --Ragib 17:57, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I think you are seriously misunderstanding the nature of this particular disaster. Most of the deaths in the 1970 Bhola cyclone (and many similar disasters affecting Bangladesh) were as the result of a tidal surge. The effects are prety much indistinquishable from a tsunami and most of the deaths would have occurred over a period of a couple of hours. This event would have been much more like the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake (only probably greater loss of life), than the Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. Perhaps the article should make this clearer. -- Solipsist 19:34, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I was replying to jcomp489, who commented that the Huang he flood is the worst natural disaster. I meant that the floods (in Huang he or otherwise) are not directly responsible for all those deaths, the resulting disease and famines are. On the contrary, in case of a cyclone like the 1970 one, people died almost directly as a result of the tidal wave. Also, I understand the nature of this disaster very very well, I was born and brought up in Chittagong, and faced the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone first-hand. The shape of the Bay of Bengal near Bangladesh is like a funnel, so any large cyclone creates huge tidal waves. During the 1991 cyclone, the tidal waves were 30+ feet high (I lived 10+ miles inland, but even there water reached up to the 2nd floor of buildings). People living in the coast literally were swept away and drowned in matter of seconds. That's why I commented that this is quite different from floods, which may be bad, but do not kill people directly, and as such can't be termed as worst natural disasters. --Ragib 19:53, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Fine points made, btw. I suppose you're right, otherwise the greatest disasters would be the various outbreaks of disease that have occured throughout history. Point taken. jcomp489

Ah, sorry - my mistake. I hadn't spotted the divergence in the discussion from the earlier '

this is not like the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake' comments. -- Solipsist 20:19, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] track

why is it showing an all depression? Irfanfaiz 05:35, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Because the intensity is unknown. If we had a separate color for unknown we could use that instead. Jdorje 05:47, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

In the best-track file, wind speed and pressure are given as 0 for each entry, and only a position and type is given. Jdorje 05:48, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Fixed. See {{storm colour unknown}}. Jdorje 20:41, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Todo

Separate storm history from impact, maybe some information on the relationship between this storm and the civil war. Jdorje 21:18, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

One immediate relation is the disillusionment of the people of East Pakistan to a greater extent. Despite the huge loss of lives, very little help and relief were arranged by the Military government of Pakistan. This strengthened the independence movement, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who won a landslide victory (167 out of 169 seats in East Pakistan), and was supposed to become the PM. The refusal to hand over power to him led to the Bangladesh Liberation War. Thanks. --Ragib 21:31, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sleeping through a Cyclone?

"The result was widespread flooding, with many people drowning in their sleep." This seems highly unlikely to me. Is there a reference? The feature articles from American papers that I read like the NY Times spotlighted people trying to hold onto trees and survive. How many people are such heavy sleepers that they'd be carried out to sea, getting smacked by debris along the way, and never wake up? I won't remove this right away but I'll presume no response means agreement. Ando228 14:18, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

That may be true, assuming that there was widespread notification of the storm. However, it was 1970, and virtually all people had no access to media. Also, the media was not as sophisticated as it is today. So, most of the people didn't get a clue that a tidal bore is coming.

Remember that the deaths were not due to the storm's winds, but rather due to the tidal bore that swept the coastal areas. And it doesn't come gradually, but rather is like a tsunami. So, it is of course justifiable that many people were asleep at the time. --Ragib 19:17, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay. I understand that they might have been asleep at the time the flooding started but I'm assuming they woke up when the water hit. Perhaps it should just be rephrased to something like "The result was widespread flooding, with many people asleep when the tidal bore overwhelmed their homes" but "people drowning in their sleep" infers that they died while sleeping. It's addressing the state of the person right before their death, not when the floods first hit. Ando228 22:10, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Todo

Expand intro and more impact. Storm05 17:12, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Todo (part 3)

I'm not going to be able to do all this myself (at least not right away), but this article needs to be restructured similarly to other tropical cyclone articles (see Cyclone Mala, Hurricane Isabel, Tropical Storm Bilis). It needs separate impact and storm history sections. --Coredesat 18:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)