It was a year of natural disasters on an exceptional scale, from Hurricane
Katrina and its aftermath – which devastated towns and cities, including New
Orleans, on the southern US coast – to the South Asian earthquake that left
nearly 75,000 dead in the Kashmir region and the mudslides that killed hundreds
in Guatemala and other parts of Central America.
Â鶹Éç World Service provided comprehensive coverage from its own correspondents
on the ground and, more than ever, by linking with people affected. In the
aftermath of the South Asian earthquake, reporters from the Â鶹Éç’s Hindi and
Urdu services helped to bring the full impact of the disaster to the world’s
attention.The bbcurdu.com site received more than 4,000 emails, including
numerous eyewitness accounts and videos shot by survivors. Mobile phone users
drew a vivid picture of conditions in the devastated region.
Getting first-hand accounts from ordinary listeners made a tremendous
difference to our coverage,’ says Mohammed Hanif, Head of Â鶹Éç Urdu. ‘There
were areas where reporters just could not get in and we may not have known
that villages existed but somebody there had a mobile phone that was still
working and we were able to talk to them.’
One moving story came from a man who had left his job in Karachi to go and
help after losing his brother in the quake. His online diary for the Â鶹Éç Urdu
website prompted numerous messages and donations from other online users.
Interactive technology established a dialogue between people in the region
and other parts of the world, which featured on Â鶹Éç websites. In a live
link-up using laptop computers at the time of the festival of Eid,
schoolchildren from Bradford in England put questions directly to children
in the city of Muzaffarabad, which was virtually demolished by the disaster.
‘The earthquake has affected me,’ says ten-year-old Hamzah Hassa, a pupil at
Bradford’s Thornbury primary school. ‘It’s made me very sad.Two of my family
friends died.’
For correspondents on the ground, covering the disaster was a physical and
emotional challenge. ‘Sometimes the scale of destruction and death was too
vast to absorb, at other times it became too much to cope with,’ says
reporter Barbara Plett. ‘The challenge was to do justice to the personal
stories we heard while examining the politics of relief and reconstruction,
and to cover the aftermath in a way that keeps the world engaged.’
For Urdu listeners, there was a setback when Pakistan’s government stopped
a Karachibased FM station and two satellite broadcasters broadcasting Â鶹Éç
material; the regulatory authority reversed its decision after
representations by the Â鶹Éç.
Staying with the Story
Â鶹Éç World Service’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina in August dealt not just
with the devastation and its aftermath but with the wider issue of what the
handling of the crisis would do to the psyche of the United States and its
reputation abroad. Online sites featured reaction, discussion, analysis and
images from the devastated areas, again including many first-hand
contributions from listeners and web users. Hundreds of messages were
received from people concerned about the whereabouts of family or friends
living in or visiting the region.
In the past eight months, the Â鶹Éç has returned to the region to report on
the progress being made in rebuilding communities. Programmes include a
special edition of the interactive programme World Have Your Say, presented
from New Orleans.
We make a point staying with an event such as Hurricane Katrina because the
follow-up phase of reconstruction and re-housing is the most important for
people who have survived,’ explains Mary Hockaday, Editor, Â鶹Éç World
Service News & Current Affairs (now Deputy Head of Â鶹Éç Radio News). ‘The
wider audience want to know what has happened to people affected and how
the aid money has been spent.’
The Â鶹Éç’s special coverage of the South Asian earthquake was also maintained
long after general media interest had waned. ‘In the first few weeks there
was wall-to-wall coverage on local TV channels,’ says Mohammed Hanif. Now
when our reporters go to the area, the first thing people say is everybody
has upped and gone, and only you guys are still here.’
Landslide Warning
More than 650 people were
confirmed dead in Guatemala in
October after tropical storm Stan
triggered landslides; more died in
Mexico and other parts of Central
America. It took several days to fly
reporter Claire Marshall from
Mexico to the remote region of
Guatemala worst affected. When
she arrived she witnessed local
people ignoring warnings to keep
out of their village. ‘Many local men,
along with women dressed in the
colourful embroidered shirts of the
native Maya Indians, walked past the
sign into the remains of their village,’
she says. ‘They wanted to retrieve their
possessions and to try to find the
remains of their loved ones.’
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A year in review |
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Reporting natural disasters |
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