Cyclone shelters and preparedness

Volunteer warning networks and thousands of shelters have sharply reduced cyclone deaths along the coast since 1970 and 1991.

The cyclone of November 1970 killed several hundred thousand people in coastal Bengal, and the 1991 cyclone killed about 140,000. After 1970 the Cyclone Preparedness Programme, run jointly by the government and the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, began training village volunteers to spread warnings by megaphone and flags and to help people evacuate. With tens of thousands of volunteers and a large network of multipurpose shelters, later storms such as Sidr in 2007 caused far fewer deaths. Bangladesh's approach is often cited as an example of community-based disaster risk reduction.