The smell came first, then the tops of coconut palms, floating on tiny stalks above the placid Bay-at last the low mud bank with its horrendous burden of decaying bodies. I had to run the dinghy down the coast for over a mile before I could find a spot to land without stepping on one of the luckless victims of the cyclone. I scrambled up the slippery bank, nearly retching, and stood on a dirt mound that only last week had been a home. There before me was a beautiful, golden, flattened and utterly desolate land... -Jon Rohde's account of landing on Manpura, November 23, 1970 Catalyst is the...
The smell came first, then the tops of coconut palms, floating on tiny stalks above the placid Bay-at last the low mud bank with its horrendous burden...