Uprooted trees were their saviours

Uprooted trees have become the iconic markers of the bleak landscape left behind by Cyclone Sidr. To a number of survivors, trees were their saviours. But to others, they brought death.

"When I was running to the shelter to escape from the storm, this big wave suddenly rose out of the water and swept me up. My hand hit a tree, but I couldn't hold on to it. Next time around, I grabbed a tree branch and grasped it with all my strength," said Alim from Araitoli in Barguna's Amtoli upazila.

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Almost all the survivors who were exposed to the tidal wave in Barguna and Patuakhali share Rahim's story. Most of them were either reluctant to leave their homes for cyclone shelters, while others simply did not have a shelter in their area.

The trees, for these survivors, were the first and only shelter they could find.

Jabbar, a twenty-something man from Bheduria in Amtoli, told The Daily Star, "The shelter is too far away from my home. So at the first sign of the storm, I ran out and climbed on the first tree that I saw. When the water came, I knew that all I could do was to hang on to the tree."

He survived.

His mother, Amina, and two cousins were not as lucky. For them, the trees offered no sanctuary. Hundreds of the dead share Amina's last moments.

Some fell under the trees, brought down by the ferocious winds while they were running to reach the shelter.

A number of elderly men were found dead under trees. It seemed they were too weak to wriggle from underneath. Some fell with the trees. "My nephew and I climbed onto two different trees as we were running from the wave. I hung on to the tree with my eyes closed," said Kabir Hossain, a man in his 20s, from Rohita village in southern Barguna.

"When I opened them, the tree next to me was gone," he added.

Some couldn't climb high enough to escape the 20-foot tidal wave. Several bodies were found hanging from low branches of trees at Gangamati village in Kalapara upazila, Potuakhali. The same fate was shared by hundreds of others in Potuakhali and Barguna.

Ironically, the fallen trees will also be the source of income for a number of families left destitute by Sidr as they will sell the timber to regain at least some of the wealth they have lost.