Bhola cyclone made landfall in East Pakistan - November 12, 1970

On this day in 1970, the deadliest tropical cyclone in recorded history made landfall in East Pakistan.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class. It's a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello everybody, I'm Eves and you're tuned into
This Day in History Class, a show where we've traveled
back in time one day at a time. Today is
November twelve, nineteen. The day was November twelve, nineteen seventy,

(00:26):
the deadliest tropical cyclone on record, made landfall on the
coast of what was then East Pakistan or modern day Bangladesh.
At least three hundred thousand people died in the Bola cyclone.
The remnants of tropical Storm Nora in the Pacific Ocean
contributed to the development of a tropical depression that formed
in the Bay of Bengal on November eighth, nineteen seventy.

(00:50):
The Indian Meteorological Department or i m D tracked the
system by satellite, but the technique for estimating tropical cyclone
strength from satellite presentations was new, so there were no
direct measurements of the intensity of the tropical system. The
storm drifted north for two days, then intensified rapidly. By
November eleven, it had become a well defined cyclone with

(01:11):
sustained winds between eighty five and ninety miles per hour.
On the twelve, the i m D estimated that the
maximum sustained winds were around one and thirty miles per hour.
It's not clear exactly how much information about the storm
Indian weather authorities communicated to Pakistan, considering the tense relations
between India and Pakistan at the time. That said, the

(01:34):
Pakistan Meteorological Department did issue a warning to people in
the coastal regions on the twelfth, but few people were
near or able to make it to reliable shelters, if
they even sought one at all. That afternoon, the cyclone
made landfall on the coastline of East Pakistan. It was
the sixth and strongest cyclonic storm of that year's North

(01:55):
Indian Ocean cyclone season. As the storm hit land, it
brought a thirty five ft high storm surge at the
Ganges Delta. It flooded the lowland plains of the Ganges Delta,
destroying hundreds of villages. The cyclone dissipated as it moved inland,
degrading to a cyclonic storm by the thirteenth, but the

(02:15):
combination of the storm surge and poor preparedness led to
the death of many people. The death toll of the
storm is estimated at between three hundred thousand and five
hundred thousand people. Most of the people who died were
young children. The most severely affected area was Tazi Muddon,
where nearly half of the population died and a lot

(02:37):
of the fishing industry in the region was destroyed. The
damage caused by the cyclone came in at around eighty
six million dollars in nineteen seventy u s D. Countries
around the world, including France, West Germany, Canada, Singapore, and
the US sent a to Pakistan, but the Pakistani government's
response was slow and the damage was made worse. In

(02:58):
the aftermath of the Boloside clone. People starved from the
lack of food, they drink contaminated water, and died from
dehydration or disease. Politicians in East Pakistan and the press
criticized the Pakistani government for its poor handling of the
disaster relief effort. Partly because of the government's poor response,
tensions between East and West Pakistan escalated and an opposition

(03:22):
party won elections in East Pakistan in December. The Bangladesh
Liberation War broke out in March of nineteen seventy one
in East Pakistan declared itself the independent Nation of Bangladesh.
In the years after the Bullet cyclone, a cyclone preparedness
program developed in Bangladesh that allowed for better disaster planning
and response in the region. I'm Eve Jeffcote and hopefully

(03:46):
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(04:08):
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