11,000 KILLED .

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 January 1943, Page 2

11,000 KILLED .

STORM DISASTER IN BENGAL IN OCTOBER CYCLONE & TIDAL WAVE 25,000 DWELLINGS DESTROYED. HEAVY LOSSES OF STOCK AND PROPERTY. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.45 a.m.) LONDON, January 8. It is now revealed that 3,000 square miles of territory were affected by a terrific cyclone which swept South-Western Bengal last October, when at least 11,000 people were killed. The cyclone swept up a tidal wave 26 feet high from the Bay of Bengal. It devastated a considerable area.

About 25,000 dwellings were destroyed, and almost every house throughout the area was damaged. Seventy-five thousand head of cattle, three-quarters of the stock in the area, perished. Over a million persons were affected, half a million of whom suffered severe loss or injury.

An eye-witness said houses fell as though made of paper. Iron roofs crushed many people to death in the streets. Uprooted trees blew away like straws. The roaring wind and rain, coupled with the crashing and crackling of houses and trees, made speech impossible. Thousands of poisonous snakes and crocodiles, (floating on the flood waters, made rescue difficult. Innumerable bodies within a few days filled the air with a foul stench. One person out of 150 survived in one village, and 132 families out of 136 were wiped out in another village.

The full extent of the disaster was not revealed previously because the information would have been valuable to the Japanese. Communications were so seriously disrupted that the Japanese might have taken advantage of the district’s plight.