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South Asian flood death toll at 388©Associated PressJuly 28, 2002 SHOILABARI, Bangladesh -- Five days ago, Ramzan Ali watched as the Jamuna River devoured his family's tin-and-bamboo house at the foot of a mud barrier meant to protect them. "Our house just started sinking in the soil. We had just enough time to salvage the tin walls and a few belongings. The gushing water carried away the rest of our house in front of our eyes," Ali, a 60-year-old farmer, said Saturday. Ali is one of 7-million people left homeless or stranded by floods and mudslides in Bangladesh, Nepal and India in the past month. The region's death toll climbed to 388 after Bangladesh and India reported 21 more deaths Saturday. In Bangladesh, eight people drowned in swirling flood waters in the north, raising the country's toll to 90. Annual floods are common during the monsoon season of South Asia, which shares some of the world's longest rivers, such as the Brahmaputra and the Ganges. This year's inundation is the worst in four years. More than 3,000 people died in 1988 in Bangladesh and more than 1,000 in 1998 floods. This time, flood waters have engulfed a third of Bangladesh, an impoverished delta nation of 130-million people. The worst is still to come as Bangladesh's 250 rivers rose further Saturday from unrelenting rain, the Flood Forecasting and Warning Center said. Ali, his wife, Kulsum, and their six children have taken shelter with relatives on higher ground along the surging Jamuna River at Shoilabari village in Sirajganj district, one of the hardest hit areas, 64 miles northwest of the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka. Ali knows only too well about losing everything to the river. His family was forced to move to Shoilabari after losing their house and 10 acres of farmland on the eastern bank of the Jamuna River in 1988. Torrential rains and surging flood waters from the neighboring Indian state of Assam have swollen the Jamuna beyond flood levels in Sirajganj, where nearly 70,000 people have been left homeless. Ali's family is among some 500 people who found shelter on the mud embankment after the rising Jamuna swept away parts of a barrier meant to protect villages from the annual floods, said Mohammad Ishaq Ali, a village official. Most deaths have been in Nepal, where incessant rain has pushed mud and rock down Himalayan mountainsides, smashing 3,700 houses and burying villages. At least 200 people have died and 30 are missing, the kingdom's Home Ministry said. "There are hundreds of people who have lost their family members, their homes and their farms," said Birod Khatiwada, a former member of parliament from the worst-hit Makwanpur district. The government announced Friday that it had allocated $66,000 for relief efforts and more aid was on the way. In the Indian state of Bihar, 79 people were killed. Among the dead were the victims of two boats that overturned Friday on surging rivers -- 20 who died on the Kosi River, and four others on the Gopalganj River, said an official in Bihar's flood control office. Nineteen people have died in India's northeastern Assam province, where floods submerged about 1,000 villages. On the outskirts of Guahati, the state capital, a swollen tributary of the Brahmaputra burst on Saturday. Eight villages were submerged and thousands were left homeless. Flood Control Minister Noorjamal Sarkar said the number of people affected in Assam has gone up to 2.2-million in 17 of Assam's 23 districts. Back in Bangladesh, Ali and his family are sheltered by salvaged tin sheets, bamboo fences, wooden doors and windows of houses that were washed away. Authorities have been working to save the barrier from further erosion by piling sandbags at vulnerable points. "If Shoilabari barrier goes, then the Jamuna will change its course and the whole area will be in danger of going under water," said Mujibur Rahman, a government engineer. As for the future, Ali leaves it to fate, as do many of the Muslims and Hindus of the region. "We will go where Allah takes us and rebuild our home again," he said.
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