The Terrible Twins

Two disasters hit Pakistan last week, one as modern as the jet age, one as ancient as the wind on the face of the waters. Approaching Cairo, a Pakistani International Airlines Boeing 720B, inaugurating a new Karachi-Cairo-London run, developed engine trouble and crashed. All but six of its 130 passengers and crew were killed, including 21 Pakistani newsmen. "It was the will of God," said Gala Alkarini, one survivor, as seven baboons that had been in the luggage compartment capered, unharmed, amid the smoking ruins.

Meanwhile, up the Bay of Bengal into East Pakistan raged one of the huge cyclones that commonly rise at the start of the monsoon. Winds howling up to 100 m.p.h. washed 13-ft. tidal waves over the narrow channels of the Ganges delta, flooding the alluvial fields, smashing and flattening the green stalks of the vital jute crop, ripping apart banana, betel nut and coconut palm plantations, uprooting giant mango orchards and inundating thousands of acres of rice. In East Pakistan's capital of Dacca, 125 miles from the sea, millions spent four terrified hours in the dead of night as banshee winds raked off corrugated iron hut roofs and wound them around telephone poles, shredded power lines and choked water mains and wells with brine.

Toll: between $300 and $600 million in property damage, including 50,000 cattle and 5,000,000 homes. More than 12,000 Pakistanis were dead, mostly drowned. It was the worst season since 1960, when two storms a fortnight apart killed 16,000, though it was small compared to the disaster of 1876, when 100,000 drowned in 30 minutes.

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