- Title: INDIA: CYCLONE LASHES REFUGEE CAMPS IN CALCUTTA REGION
- Date: 1st October 1971
- Summary: 1. MS Refugee camp 0.06 2. CU Children standing outside damaged tents (3 shots) 0.19 3. MS People walking past damaged huts 0.24 4. CU Int. huts - woman cleaning up TILT TO missing roof 0.30 5. MS PAN wrecked tents and huts (2 shots) 0.45 6. CU Woman sitting outside tents 0.51 7. MS People sitting outside tents 0.58 8.
- Embargoed: 16th October 1971 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: SALT LAKE, NEAR CALCUTTA, INDIA
- Country: India
- Reuters ID: LVA34YCBHYEJKLET7C9Y5O75W7R4
- Story Text: A severe cyclone swept through West Bengal on Wednesday, (29 September) wrecking refugee camps at Salt Lake, near Calcutta. some 250,000 refugees from East Pakistan live in the camps, and nearly a third of them were made homeless as the strong winds tore through the tent and hut settlements.
At least eleven people died in West Bengal, mainly through falling buildings. Reports from Dacca indicated that severe damage also occurred in East Pakistan as the cyclone swept ashore from the Bay of Bengal.
SYNOPSIS: East Pakistan refugees living in encampments in the Calcutta region of India are struggling to reconstruct tents an huts torn down by a cyclone which raged through the area on Wednesday. One badly affected district was at Salt Lake, where about a quarter million refugees are living. The storm made nearly a third of them homeless.
The cyclone had swept into East Pakistan the previous night, accompanied by five-foot waves which lashed some of the areas hit by the much bigger disaster last November. Reports from Dacca said one man died and three were missing. As the storm moved on into India, pushing a belt of heavy rain before it. another eleven died. Most were hit by falling buildings, out one was electrocuted as power lines were blown down.
There were no reports of casualties among the mass of refugees in the Calcutta region. For them it was just one more test of their ability to improvise and survive. Their's were not only tents blown down. Ceremonial tents set up for an important Hindu religious festival suffered the same fate.
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