TEARS ON AN ISLAND

IN his years as a plastic surgeon and head of the emergency department at Salmaniya Medical Complex, Dr Abdul Aziz Hamza was involved with the response to several tragic accidents and disasters, a role that saw him looking to the past to help plan for future emergencies.

Now Dr Hamza, under-secretary at the Ministry of Health, has produced a detailed, image-filled book Tears on an Island which recalls the tragedies, from the strong winds of 1925 which claimed the lives of around 5,000 pearl fishermen, to the Gulf Air crash of August 2000 in which all 135 passengers and eight crew perished.

From the fires that have raged through villages and labour accommodation to political unrest and sports event rampages, Dr Hamza has spent several years researching them all.

He said: "For me, the Gulf Air disaster was the most significant and painful tragedy that will be forever remembered. As the head of the Medical Response Team designed to deal with the aftermath of this tragedy, we worked hand in hand with Ministry of Interior and Civil Defence teams.

"An important aspect of trying to improve how one deals with disasters was to study the history of disasters in this nation and to analyse the nature of the response to these disasters.

"It is from this desire to improve emergency services that this book has developed."

The book opens with Sannat Al-Tab'ah, 'the year of the sinking' - 1925. At the beginning of October an estimated 25,000 men set sail from ports around the Gulf at the beginning of the annual pearl season.

These intrepid sailors and divers would stay at sea for several months in search of the ocean's riches.

But just before 7.30pm on October 1, heavy winds struck scattering the ships. Damage to the vessels was extensive and of the 25,000 who set sail around 5,000 never returned.

Almost 25 years later, 1949 became 'the year of the small sinking' when a boat sailing from Bahrain to the island of Al Nabeeh Saleh was caught in a storm which flipped the vessel. There are thought to have been 60 to 65 people on board of whom 41 died, mainly women and children.

In 1964, Bahrain was close to freezing point, the seas rumbled, winds reached 42 knots and the temperature fell to just five degrees. Life across the island came to a standstill as frost and ice hung from trees and buildings, there were floods and animals and fish died.

Floods and storms over the years have been an almost regular event but perhaps less well known are the disease epidemics which have hit the island.

Though there are some earlier records, the first widespread outbreak of Cholera was documented by the British in July 1893 and by the end of August the death toll had reached 7,000.

May 1903 saw an outbreak of bubonic plague in which around 600 cases were recorded, of these 301 people died.

In the period from 1839 to 1924 there were nine epidemics of plague, three of cholera and one of influenza. A total of 24,205 people are thought to have died as a result, almost 25 per cent of the 100,000-strong population.

In response, organised medical services began on the island in 1900 with the establishment of two government hospitals; the American Mission Hospital, which is still in operation today, and the Victoria Memorial Hospital, which closed in 1948. A quarantine area was also set up in Muharraq where all new arrivals were screened for disease.

In later years the island has experienced malaria, typhoid, mumps, meningitis and even smallpox as recently as 1957. However, Bahrain has been free of quarantineable diseases since 1965.

Though they did not present problems for the medical services, Dr Hamza also mentions two natural phenomena experienced on the island. The Year of the Grasshoppers, 1928, when for a few hours in February grasshoppers filled the air. And in July 1958 when Bahrain's waters and beaches were invaded by literally thousands of jellyfish.

Of the technological disasters to hit the island, perhaps the most well known, of recent years, are the capsize of the dhow, the Al Dana, which went down off the coast of Murharraq in March 2006 and the crash of Gulf Air flight 072 on August 23, 2000.

Dr Hamza was at the heart of the response teams for both emergencies and shares with readers a number of unseen pictures as wreckage is pulled from the waters of the Gulf and the island's prime minister and royal family turn out to comfort survivors.

And the book also details other, perhaps less well-remembered tragedies such as the two Air France crashes, just 48 hours apart, in June 1950 which left 83 dead and prompted the erection of a permanent memorial at the Bahraini Christian Cemetery.

August 23 is shown to be a black day for aviation with details of another crash more than half a century before Gulf Air's fated flight 072.

On the same day in 1947 a BOAC flight coming from Karachi, Pakistan, overshot the runway and landed in the water. Of the 18 people on board seven died and it was noted that they had experienced difficulty getting off the stricken aircraft leading to drownings.

Many also drowned with the sinking of the passenger liner MV Dara, of the British Indian Steam Navigation Company, which was rocked by a massive explosion in the early hours of the morning on April 8, 1961.

Although the ship went down off the coast of Dubai, with the loss of 238 lives either through burns or drowning, many of those on board were Bahrainis, including 18 Bapco employees.

The story of the Seistan is also featured. The ship blew up off Sitra in February, 1958, killing more than 50 crew as well as five people on the tug Suhail which was alongside the Seistan at the time of the blast.

August 23 crops up yet again in the section on electrical blackouts. While managed power cuts are, like storms, not uncommon, the blackout of August 23, 2004, saw the whole island without electricity.

Businesses were forced to close, the hospitals were badly hit and, with traffic lights out across the island, there was chaos on the roads with more than 30 accidents in just a few hours, including one fatality.

And fires feature prominently with details of major conflagrations spanning 40 years from 1936 to 2006 which claimed several lives and caused millions of dinars in damage.

And, finally, the book deals with the problem of riots and the potential for crowd disasters without proper planning for large gatherings.

Speaking of Bahrain's recent move to establish a disaster response plan, Dr Hamza concluded: "Some disasters are inevitable. Others, such as man-made disasters can be reduced or even prevented as long as they are anticipated.

"Management of risk is now a science and, once plans are put in place to minimise damage and react to these disasters, their consequences will have less effect and their impact will be less.

"In many instances, because of the lack of immediate disaster response, the consequences and side effects of the disaster are worse than the disaster itself.

"I want us to learn from the past and also to remind the children of Bahrain that these things happened."

The book Tears on an Island hits the shelves, priced BD15, at Jashanmal stores this week.