Remember victims of other disasters

Sir, - Your article on Wednesday, Floodwaters drop across Houston as death toll rises from Storm Harvey, stated the death toll as being at least 22.

This is a tragic event but given that it comes when similar weatherrelated deaths in Asia with much higher casualties are largely ignored, comes as no surprise to me.

I learned when a merchant seaman in December 1965 that Asian lives don’t count.

My ship at that time, the Clan Line’s MV King George, was bound for Chittagong, East Pakistan, to load jute for Dundee when we ran into a cyclone in the Indian Ocean.

The master, plotting the course of this cyclone, hove too short of our destination, only to land in the eye of the storm.

Anyway, we made it to Chittagong safely which is more than can be said for about 2,000 to 3,000 fishermen and coastal dwellers at Cox’s Bazar.

That was the number of deaths given in an article no bigger than a postage stamp in the only UK newspaper that reported the tragedy.

As for the master’s nervousness in our approach to Chittagong, he had good cause, given that a few years earlier, in 1960, another Clan Line ship, the Clan Alpine, had been torn from its anchorage at Chittagong and borne on a tidal wave 11 kilometres inland.

The death toll in that cyclone was said to be 10,000.

Ayub Khan, the president of Pakistan, the Queen and Prince Philip visited the cargo ship in the paddy field and it was well reported, which is more than can be said for the poor souls who were lost. Black lives, Muslim lives, don’t count it seems. Tom Minogue. 94 Victoria Terrace, Dunfermline.

Picture: Getty. Residents near the Barker Reservoir, Houston, Texas, return to their flooded homes to collect belongings.