May 6, 2008
UK Daily Mail
The Burma cyclone has wiped out at least 10,000 people in one town alone alone, with the national toll set to top 50,000 dead - mostly killed by a massive sea surge that engulfed across the lowlands.
The cyclone sent the 12ft wave rushing across the Irrawaddy delta, giving people nowhere to run, Burmese officials said today.
"More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself," the Burmese minister for relief and resettlement, Maung Maung Swe, said in the devastated former capital, Rangoon, where food and water supplies are running low.
 Photo: Only the roofs stand about the water in flooded villages around Rangoon
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"The wave was up to 12 feet high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages," he said. "They did not have anywhere to flee."
Cyclone Nargis is the worst to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people died in Bangladesh.
State television today announced a death toll of 22,464 – but nearly half of that figure comes from the single Irrawaddy delta town of Bogalay.
A total of 30,000 people are thought to be missing.
n an appeal for international aid, the country's secretive government announced there could be even more casualties.
The casualty count has been rising quickly as rescue teams reach hard-hit islands and villages in the delta, the former "rice bowl of Asia" which bore the brunt of the cyclone's 150-mile-an-hour winds.
Hundreds of thousands of villagers have been left without shelter or drinking water since the cyclone ripped through the delta on Saturday.
Huge tidal surges added to the devastation, destroying homes and buildings and wiping out essential rice crops.
"People are saying this is worse than the tsunami [in 2004]," said James East, of the charity World Vision. "It's like a war zone. The number of dead is just staggering."
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| Photo: Devastation: Satellite photos of the Irawaddy delta last month and, right, yesterday show how floods have swallowed up swathes of lowland around Rangoon, in the red box |
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Mark Farmaner, director of the Burma Campaign UK, said the situation could be made worse by corrupt members of the ruling junta exploiting international aid for their own profit.
He said: " Ninety per cent of Burmese live on the poverty line. Outside the capital, in the affected Irrawaddy area, most people are poor subsistence farmers who live on less than a dollar a day. The rice was close to harvest time when the cyclone arrived. People will have lost everything.
"At the moment we've only seen the official estimates of up to 10,000 killed already, but it could be higher than that. In previous disasters, we have seen the death toll doubled because of disease and hunger."
Mr Farmaner said the cyclone had been forecast on Wednesday but government newspapers had ignored it.
"It has taken three days to report the cyclone. In any other country, helicopters would be delivering aid now.
"When we saw the forecast, I felt horror and helplessness. I know the regime does not care. I knew people would die and aid would not be allowed to them."
 Photo: Waterworld: Buddhist monks wade through floodwaters near Rangoon
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Burma's foreign minister, Nyan Win, said: "According to the latest information, more than 10,000 people were killed. Information is still being collected, and there could be more casualties."
Hospital roofs were blown off, trees came crashing down and electricity supplies were hit in the storm, which swept into the country, also known as Myanmar.
The scale of the disaster drew a rare call for help from the government, which rejected aid in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.
 Photo: Water everywhere but residents of Rangoon have to queue with buckets for clean supplies
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The First Lady, who has been the US administration's chief voice on human rights in Burma, also criticised the military regime. She suggested that it kept important information about the storm from people in its path.
"It's troubling that many of the Burmese people learned of this impending disaster only when foreign outlets sounded the alarm," she said.
Burma's neighbours have also rallied to help.
Two Indian naval ships loaded with food, tents, blankets, clothing and medicines would sail for Rangoon soon, the country's government announced.
Thailand also responded to the disaster, sending a transport plane loaded with food and medicine to Rangoon after the airport reopened on yesterday.
 Photo: Destruction path: locals walk among the electrical pylons that were felled by the cyclone
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The U.N. office in the Burmese city said there was an urgent need for plastic sheeting, water purification tablets, cooking equipment, mosquito nets and food.
It said the situation outside Rangoon was "critical, with shelter and safe water being the principal immediate needs".
In the country's former capital, food and fuel prices have soared as aid agencies scramble to deliver emergency supplies and assess the damage in the five declared disaster zones, home to 24million.
Long queues have formed in front of the few open petrol stations, and clean water is scarce.
 Photo: Food and disaster supplies for Burma are loaded up today at the military airport in Bangkok
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Roofs were ripped off even sturdy buildings, suggesting damage would be even more severe in the shanty towns that lie on the outskirts of the city, which is home to five million people.
Shari Villarosa, the top American diplomat in Yangon, said the storm's whipping winds and torrential downpour had caused "major devastation throughout the city."
"The Burmese are saying they have never seen anything like this, ever," Ms Villarosa said.
"Trees are down. Electricity lines are down. Our Burmese staff have lost their roofs."
 Photo: Merciless force: the might of the cyclone uprooted trees and lashed them into cars and buildings
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At the city's notorious Insein prison, soldiers and police killed 36 prisoners to quell a riot which began when inmates were herded into a large hall after the storm and started a fire to try to keep warm.
State television showed military and police units on rescue and clean-up operations in Rangoon, but residents complained the junta's response was weak.
"Where are the soldiers and police? They were very quick and aggressive when there were protests in the streets last year," a retired government worker said.
The junta leaders, bunkered in their remote new capital of Naypyidaw, 240 miles north of Rangoon, said they would go ahead with a May 10 referendum on a constitution which critics say will entrench the military's dominance over the country.
Should the junta be seen as failing disaster victims, voters who already blame the regime for ruining the economy and crushing democracy could take out their frustrations at the ballot box.
Burma has been under military rule since 1962.
Its government has been widely criticized for human rights abuses and suppression of pro-democracy parties such as the one led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for almost 12 of the past 18 years.
The last major storm to ravage Asia was Cyclone Sidr, which killed 3,300 people in Bangladesh last November.
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