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Background

The Bangladeshi government considered the disaster a geographical inevitability while international accounts also attributed the disaster's scale to socioeconomic and political forces.

A combination of natural and socioeconomic factors made Bangladesh one of the most susceptible places in the world to catastrophic natural disasters; C. Emdad Haque and Danny Blair of Brandon University and the University of Winnipeg wrote that "the very name of Bangladesh [had] become synonymous with 'hazardous place'" in recent years. Many of the world's deadliest storms in the 20th century occurred in Bangladesh; eight cyclones between 1960 and 1991 led to the loss of at least 500,000 lives in the country. Between 1958 and 1991, there were at least 25 natural disasters in Bangladesh with a death toll exceeding 500 people. Bangladesh's rural population density amounted to over 800 people per square kilometer and more than 80 percent of Bangladeshis were impoverished. The geography of Bangladesh—particularly the prominence of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers and their over 200 tributaries in the Bengal Delta—make the country vulnerable to frequent marine and riparian flooding. Additionally, the Bay of Bengal is one of the world's hotspots for tropical cyclogenesis, harboring warm sea surface temperatures year-round and conducive environmental conditions. The flatness, low-lying, and concave nature of the Bangladeshi coast also enhances the impact and severity of storm surge.

Flood vulnerability was also compounded by the nation's high population density, caused in part by the scarcity of land. This in turn led to a high demand for char—new land that emerges in Bangladesh's deltaic plain as a result of sediment accretion. Though these lands were initially occupied on a seasonal basis, permanent residency on chars rose in the decades prior to 1991; by the 1980s, population growth in the chars exceeded the national average. An analysis published in Disasters in 1993 determined that over 95 percent of the Bangladeshi population lived in homes incapable of withstanding storms like the 1991 cyclone, and that "there was no systematic policy to promote the construction of concrete buildings for the protection of the public during cyclones" aside from cyclone shelters. The shelters themselves were also sparse, with approximately 1 per 8,000 people in the most impacted regions.

Chars—ephemeral sediment islands in the Bengal Delta—experienced large population growths in the decades prior to 1991.

The widespread devastation in Bangladesh wrought by the 1970 Bhola cyclone was a catalyst for sweeping changes to the country's future response to tropical cyclones. The Bangladeshi government built concrete storm shelters in the three decades leading up to 1991, including 60 two-storied shelters and 40 single-story shelters. World Bank funding following the 1970 cyclone supported the construction of 238 cyclone shelters. Additional shelters were built by the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, Caritas Internationalis, and after the 1985 Urir Char cyclone by a collaboration between the governments of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. By 1991, 311 shelters with a total estimated capacity of 350,000 people had been built along coastal Bangladesh. An estimated 12 percent of the population ultimately sought refuge in these formal shelters. The Bangladeshi government constructed 150 artificial hills primarily intended for protecting household animals from flooding. Improvements to the country's meteorological warning systems were also made after the 1970 cyclone, including new methods and services for dissemination of warnings to the general public. U.S. weather satellite data could now be utilized by the Bangladeshi National Storm Warning Centre to provide advance warning on approaching storms. These warnings would in turn be distributed by the volunteers of the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society via radio. Despite the high death toll, such improvements nonetheless helped to reduce the 1991 cyclone's death toll relative to the 1970 cyclone despite their similar meteorological attributes.

Preparations

The cyclone on the morning of April 29, prior to landfall

Information regarding the 1991 cyclone first became available four and a half days before it made landfall. After 00:00 UTC on April 24, the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) raised signal number 1 (out of a 10-tier scale), denoting distant caution. Warnings concerning the approaching storm were first issued by the BMD for the at-risk population 48 hours before landfall, prompting procedures for house-to-house contact and mobilization of volunteers of the Bangladeshi Cyclone Preparedness Program. These warnings were also disseminated via the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, by other radio sources, print and television media, and by word of mouth. All volunteers in the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society's cyclone division were mobilized to coastal villages to urge residents to evacuate to safety. Radio Bangladesh initiated its broadcast of BMD warnings on April 27, and by April 29 had transitioned into a continuous broadcast of the warnings. National and local newspapers published warnings on April 28. By April 29, broadcast media had diverted from their standard programming to focus on storm preparedness.

Over 3 million people relocated ahead of the storm either on their own volition or with institutional assistance, with refuge sought in shelters or in the higher elevation interior of Bangladesh. Local volunteers contributed to the evacuation of more than 350,000 people to designated cyclone shelters. Later surveys aimed at determining the extent of evacuations found disparate results, though receptiveness to evacuation was likely higher in the outlying islands and in urban areas.

Despite their timeliness, the spatial delivery of the warnings was uneven, and more warnings were delivered to offshore islands compared to the coastal districts that ultimately bore the brunt of the cyclone's impacts. While virtually all of Kutubdia and Sandwip received warning, only 60 percent of coastal Banshkhali Upazila and Chakaria Upazila residents heard warnings. Response to these warnings was further undermined by false alarms in preceding years; though cyclone warning signals cautioning "great danger" were broadcast about once every other year, a major storm had not afflicted the affected regions in two to three decades. The fear of burglary upon fleeing their homes and a fatalistic view of the approaching storm were other major reasons that residents chose not to evacuate to emergency shelters. A reduction in the warning signal from signal 10 to signal 9 concurrent with a change in the cyclone's course between April 28–29 may have also misled people into believing the storm had weakened.

Impact

Partial enumeration of fatalities from Operation SHEBA

Upazila	Deaths
Anwara	9,970
Banshkhali	42,117
Begumganj	5
Boalkhali	51
Chakaria	17,422
Chandanaish	20
Chatkhil	5
Chittagong	1,651
Companiganj	16
Cox's Bazar Sadar	1,260
Faitkchari	14
Hathazari	6
Hatiya	2,956
Kutubdia	19,133
Lohagara	60
Maheshkhali	12,137
Mirsharai	123
Noakhali Sadar	35
Patiya	894
Ramu	16
Rangunia	7
Raozan	20
Sandwip	23,090
Satkania	7
Senbagh	3
Sitakunda	426
Teknaf	16
Ukhia	10

A flooded village nearly three weeks after the storm's passage

The 1991 Bangladesh cyclone caused extensive damage and the loss of over 100,000 lives. The scope of the disaster was enlarged in part by a growing population in areas of the country susceptible to tropical cyclones. An article published in Population and Environment described the resulting calamity as not merely a "natural disaster" but a "social or political disaster." The question of whether or not its immense scale was an inevitability or not became an impetus for public debate, as well as whether it escalated due to Bangladeshi socioeconomic and political changes or due to causes beyond Bangladesh. Factions blamed the disaster on various causes and actors; the Bangladeshi government and media blamed it on irrational individual behavior and resource scarcity, Bangladeshi citizens blamed it on global warming and greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized nations as part of a broader focus on global power structures and inequity, and non-Bangladeshi accounts focused on Bangladeshi poverty and societal inequities leading to migrations to hazardous areas of Bangladesh.

Various parties blamed the disaster on either individuals, poverty, or more broadly on Bangladeshi society or the global community. Some considered the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone and the subsequent disaster an inevitability. Prime Minister Khaleda Zia stated that disasters like the 1991 storm were "a part of [Bangladeshi] life as it comes every year in one form or another." Editorials in the Bangladesh Observer opined that such disasters were a consequence of geography, with one editorial writing that its repercussions posed "challenging geographical problems in contemporary history", and another asserting that floods, cyclones, and tornadoes would always be "the most important geographical fact of [Bangladeshi] life." International media and scholarly accounts distinguished the natural inevitability of the storm from the socioeconomic avoidability of the resulting loss of life. The Bangladesh government's official stance was that it was principally a natural calamity, absolving itself of fault in the disaster. Prime Minister Zia stated that "no government has control over natural calamities" and made a public effort to distinguish the 1991 storm from the Bangladesh famine of 1974, an event that she blamed on her political rivals in the Awami League. The government also linked global warming to the 1991 cyclone, placing some of the blame on industrialized nations. International media accounts raised a link between the scale of the disaster and the migratory demographic pressures and trends in Bangladesh in the years before 1991.

Flooding around the Karnaphuli River

The storm struck the Bangladeshi coast shortly before midnight on April 30, 1991, battering coastal stretches for several hours with winds of up to 145 mph (235 km/h) and a storm surge up to 20 ft (6 m) high; waves atop the elevated seas reached 30 ft (9 m) in height. The precise center of the storm crossed the coast 30 mi (50 km) south of Chittagong. Nineteen Bangladeshi districts were impacted. Nearly the entire Bangladeshi coast was affected by the cyclone, but the cyclone's effects were most acute in northeastern Bangladesh. Some of these areas experienced hurricane-force winds for up to eight hours. Among the cyclone's effects, storm surge in the densely populated low-lying Bangladeshi coast was the direct cause of a majority of the attendant casualties and damage. Storm surge inundation was documented throughout 160 km (100 mi) of the coast. The cyclone crippled communications in the impacted regions, though the Cyclone Preparedness Program's wireless network remained intact during the storm.

Official government estimates placed the death toll at 131,539 while the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society recorded 138,868 deaths, making the storm Bangladesh's deadliest since the 1970 Bhola cyclone. The bulk of these fatalities occurred on Bangladesh's eastern offshore islands of Kutubdia and Sandwip and along the coastal plain between Chittagong and Cox's Bazar. Among these, the Chittagong Division, Cox's Bazar, and Noakhali District experienced the greatest loss of life. Approximately 40–50 percent of inhabitants on unprotected islands were killed, as well as 30–40 percent of inhabitants on islands protected by embankments. Kutubdia and Chakaria lost at least 10 percent of their inhabitants. Another estimate placed the death toll as high as about 140,000. One study enumerated 138,849 deaths within the first three weeks of the cyclone's landfall from drownings and mortal wounds, with nearly 780 additional deaths from diarrhea-inducing diseases. The 1993 analysis in Disasters extrapolated a lower 67,226-person death toll across Bangladesh. The same analysis found that children and the elderly were disproportionately killed in the cyclone; nearly 75 percent of the deaths surveyed were children under the age of 15. Female mortality was also higher than male mortality across all age cohorts. A study conducted by the World Health Organization found that mortality was highest among children under the age of 10 and women over the age of 40. In terms of housing types, those living in kutcha housing experienced the highest death toll. An estimated 22 percent of people who were unable to seek refuge in a concrete or brick structure perished, while all of those that did survived.

Kutcha homes were unable to withstand the storm's effects; their inhabitants suffered the greatest mortality rates during the storm compared to other types of housing.

More than 460,000 injuries were reported by the government of Bangladesh. Over 10 million people were rendered homeless and over 900,000 head of cattle were lost; one analysis assessed the loss of 1,061,029 head of cattle. The swath of destruction included 122 mi (196 km) of coastal embankments and at least 74,000 acres (300 km²) of croplands. Another 585 mi (840 km) of embankments sustained damged. Harvest and standing crops in the coastal regions were wiped out by saltwater inundation. One 1991 estimate suggested that 126,291 acres (511 km) of crops were fully destroyed while another 386,700 acres (1560 km²) were at least partially damaged. Fish ponds and shrimp farms were also damaged, most evidently around Chakoria and Cox's Bazar. Some 819,608 homes were destroyed and another 882,750 were at least partially damaged. The damage toll amounted to at least US$2.4 billion while the budgetary impact to the Bangladeshi government was US$479 million. Other reports valued the overall damage at around US$4.3 billion, equivalent to a third of the gross domestic product of Bangladesh. Crop losses accounted for US$105 million out of the total damage toll.

At the Shah Amanat International Airport in Chittagong, flood inundation reached a depth of 6.5 ft (2 m).

The 5–6 m (16–20 ft) storm surge at Hatiya Island overtopped the island's dikes, resulting in inundation of the island; the combination of storm surge and high winds killed at least 2,956 people there according to official estimates. However, officials from the non-governmental organization Dwip Unnoyan Songstha believed that as many as 6,000 people may have perished on Hatiya Island, with most resulting from the overtopping of the dike in the island's East District. A high proportion of the fatalities were women, infant, and elderly people unable to swim or latch onto a tree or debris. The 22 shelters on the island had a usage rate of 52.7 percent during the storm, and many of the people killed were engulfed by the storm surge in their own homes.

The cyclone's dissipating stages brought heavy rain and high winds into northeastern India, causing the collapse of homes and disruption of telecommunications as well as some loss of life in Tripura and Mizoram.

Red Crescent Society of Bangladesh fatality counts (May 8, 1991)

• 77,792 in Chittagong
• 39,796 in Cox's Bazar
• 21,280 in Noakhali (over 8,000), Baraguna, Bhola, Feni, Lakhimpur, Patuakhali

Aftermath

The extensive devastation wrought by the cyclone caused immense physiological stress long after the storm's passage and dissipation. Diarrhea, gangrene, respiratory diseases, and general infections became commonplace. Diarrhea alone led to over 6,500 deaths and affected 19,350 others by mid-May 1991.

The estimated cost of rebuilding infrastructure, agricultural extension services, and social services amounted to over US$620 million.

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