Cyclone kills at least 351 in Myanmar, state-run TV reports

[Richard]

YANGON, Myanmar - A powerful cyclone killed more than 350 people, destroyed thousands of homes and knocked out power in the country's largest city, state-run media said Sunday.

Tropical Cyclone Nargis struck early Saturday with winds of up to 120 mph, the military-run Myaddy television station said.

Shari Villarosa, the top American diplomat in Yangon, said trees and electricity lines were down in the city after the storm's whipping winds and torrential downpour.

"Our Burmese staff have lost their roofs," she told The Associated Press. "There is major devastation throughout the city."

Five regions of the impoverished Southeast Asian country have been declared disaster zones.

At least 351 people were killed, including 162 who lived on Haing Gyi island off the country's southwest coast, state-run television said. Many of the others died in the low-lying Irrawaddy delta.

"The Irrawaddy delta was hit extremely hard not only because of the wind and rain but because of the storm surge," said Chris Kaye, the U.N.'s acting humanitarian coordinator in Yangon. "The villages there have reportedly been completely flattened."

State television reported that in the Irrawaddy's Labutta township, 75 percent of the buildings had collapsed.

The U.N. planned to send teams Monday to assess the damage, Kaye said. Initial assessment efforts have been hampered by roads clogged with debris and downed phone lines, he said.

"At the moment, we have such poor opportunity for communications that I can't really tell you very much," Kaye said.

Witnesses in Yangon said the storm's 120 mph winds blew the roofs off hundreds of houses, damaged hotels, schools and hospitals, and cut electricity to the entire city.

The state-owned newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported Sunday that the international airport in Yangon remained shut. Domestic flights have been diverted to the airport in Mandalay, it said.

"It's a bad situation. Almost all the houses are smashed. People are in a terrible situation," said a U.N. official in Yangon, who requested anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the media.

"All the roads are blocked. There is no water. There is no electricity," she said.

Yangon residents ventured out Sunday to buy construction materials to repair their homes. The price of gasoline jumped from $2.50 to $10 a gallon on the black market and everything from eggs to construction supplies had tripled, residents said.

Some people expressed anger that the military-led government in Myanmar, also known as Burma, had done little so far to help with the cleanup.

"Where are all those uniformed people who are always ready to beat civilians?" said one man, who refused to be identified for fear of retribution. "They should come out in full force and help clean up the areas and restore electricity."

The Forum for Democracy in Burma and other dissident groups outside of Myanmar called on the international community to provide urgent humanitarian assistance and urged the military junta to allow aid groups to operate freely — something it has been reluctant to do in the past.

"International expertise in dealing with natural disasters is urgently required. The military regime is ill-prepared to deal with the aftermath of the cyclone," said Naing Aung, secretary general of the Thailand-based forum.

A Western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said it was difficult for other countries to help unless they received a request from Myanmar's military rulers.

"We have to be welcomed by the host government," the diplomat said. "The international community is willing to provide humanitarian assistance. There has been tremendous destruction. At the end of the day, the government needs to let in the assistance."

Michael Annear, a regional disaster management delegate for the International Federation of the Red Cross in Bangkok, said his agency had teams in Yangon on Sunday distributing shelter kits and other relief supplies.

The cyclone came at a delicate time for Myanmar, which is scheduled to hold a referendum May 10 on the country's military-backed draft constitution. Authorities have not yet said whether they would postpone the vote.

A military-managed national convention was held intermittently for 14 years to lay down guidelines for the country's new constitution.

The new constitution is supposed to be followed in 2010 by a general election. Both votes are elements of a "roadmap to democracy" drawn up by the junta, which has been in power for two decades.

Critics say the draft constitution is designed to cement military power and have urged citizens to vote no.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080504/ap_o...AAzw6s0NUE

[Richard]

From The Times
May 6, 2008

Natural disaster could become catalyst to blow away injustice

Richard Lloyd Parry

Even at the best of times, the Irrawaddy delta is one of the least accessible areas of one of South-East Asia’s most closed and impenetrable countries.

Roads are few and rough. Communication between the scattered farming villages is by boat along the myriad streams and channels known as the “mouths of the Irrawaddy”. The river sustains rich fishing and the most fertile rice fields in Burma.

However, early on Saturday — within the space of a few hours — the waters turned deadly.

It is too soon to know the extent of the destruction, but there is no longer any doubt that a massive humanitarian catastrophe has struck Burma. Cyclone Nargis, with its 120mph winds, coincided with a 12ft-high storm surge. Even last night there was little hard information about the extent of the damage but it seems clear that fields, houses, roads, ditches, houses and entire communities have been blown and washed away.

Yesterday morning, the official death toll was 351. On the state-run evening news it had risen to 4,000 and 3,000 “missing”. Two hours later, the military Government’s Foreign Minister was on state television. “According to the latest information, more than 10,000 people were killed,” Nyan Win said, after meeting foreign diplomats.

If the number of known dead increased thirtyfold yesterday, how much will it rise today?

The numbers of injured, it can be assumed, are several multiples of the dead. The numbers of homeless are unknown — the best that Richard Horsey, a United Nations official in Thailand, could guess was several hundred thousand “but how many hundred thousand we just don’t know”. A World Food Programme official said that 90 per cent of houses in the worst-affected zone were destroyed.

No one in Burma has seen a natural disaster like this in living memory. But this is a catastrophe whose consequences do not end with the dead and injured. Its ripples will be felt across the region and it has the potential, at least, to reshape the entire country.

Apart from the loss of life, the injuries and the destruction of tens of thousands of homes, the disaster may have far-reaching secondary effects. The flooding and destruction of sanitation systems increase the risk of epidemics, including malaria and typhoid; the loss of livelihoods is crippling in communities where many people subsist on less than $1 a day.

The features that made the stricken area vulnerable to this disaster — its low-lying geography and proximity to water — also made it Burma’s rice bowl. The cyclone has undoubtedly wrought terrible damage on the country’s agriculture. World rice prices are at a record high already, provoking food riots in more than 30 countries. Burma is a net exporter of rice, and the destruction of crops in the Irrawaddy delta will only add to upward pressure on international prices. The country may be unable to keep its promise to sell rice to other needy countries such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Last night international agencies were racing to mount South-East Asia’s biggest relief effort since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. But they are powerless to act without an invitation from the Burmese Government. The Foreign Minister’s words last night suggest that this will soon be forthcoming — and this, in itself, represents a remarkable development for Burma.

The State Peace and Development Council, as the junta calls itself, is one of the most repressive and xenophobic dictatorships in the world. Last September it earned international odium by violently suppressing huge demonstrations by Buddhist monks and ordinary citizens demanding democracy. In the aftermath it expelled the head of the United Nations in the country and froze some UN activities.

The regime appears to regard foreign aid workers as a Trojan Horse, an encouragement and support to democratic subversion — but now, eight months later, it is poised to invite them in huge numbers.

On Saturday the junta is due to hold a referendum on a “democratic” constitution, which many Burmese regard as no more than a ploy to extend and legitimise the generals’ power.

After the arrest and persecution of those who took part in the September demonstrations, will the agony of the cyclone disaster cow the population even further? Or will it kindle further anger and lead to new unrest?

Already in Rangoon there were reports of local resentment at the failure of the military to assist with the clean-up. If these sentiments grow over time, and if the demonstrations start again, then Cyclone Nargis may turn out to have blown away much more than houses, fields and trees.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/wo...875588.ece

[Richard]

Myanmar cyclone death toll soars past 22,000: state radio

1 hour, 7 minutes ago

The cyclone death toll soared above 22,000 on Tuesday and more than 41,000 others were missing as foreign countries mobilized to rush in aid after the country's deadliest storm on record, state radio reported.

Up to 1 million people may be homeless after Cyclone Nargis hit the Southeast Asian nation, also known as Burma, early Saturday. Some villages have been almost totally eradicated and vast rice-growing areas are wiped out, the World Food Program said.

Images from state television showed large trees and electricity poles sprawled across roads and roofless houses ringed by large sheets of water in the Irrawaddy River delta region, which is regarded as Myanmar's rice bowl.

"From the reports we are getting, entire villages have been flattened and the final death toll may be huge," Mac Pieczowski, who heads the International Organization for Migration office in Yangon, said in a statement.

President Bush called on Myanmar's military junta to allow the United States to help with disaster assistance, saying the U.S. already has provided some assistance but wants to do more.

"We're prepared to move U.S. Navy assets to help find those who have lost their lives, to help find the missing, to help stabilize the situation. But in order to do so, the military junta must allow our disaster assessment teams into the country," he said.

Bush spoke at a ceremony where he signed legislation awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to Burmese democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Myanmar's military regime has signaled it will welcome aid supplies for victims of a devastating cyclone, the U.N. said Tuesday, clearing the way for a major relief operation from international organizations.

But U.N. workers were still awaiting their visas to enter the country, said Elisabeth Byrs of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

"The government has shown a certain openness so far," Byrs said. "We hope that we will get the visas as soon as possible, in the coming hours. I think the authorities have understood the seriousness of the situation and that they will act accordingly."

The appeal for outside assistance was unusual for Myanmar's ruling generals, who have long been suspicious of international organizations and closely controlled their activities. Several agencies, including the International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, have limited their presence as a consequence.

Allowing any major influx of foreigners could carry risks for the military, injecting unwanted outside influence and giving the aid givers rather than the junta credit for a recovery.

However, keeping out international aid would focus blame squarely on the military should it fail to restore peoples' livelihoods.

Some aid agencies reported their assessment teams had reached some areas of the largely isolated region but said getting in supplies and large numbers of aid workers would be difficult.

Shari Villarosa, the top American diplomat in Yangon, told NBC's "Today" show that the cyclone had knocked huge trees in the country's largest city.

"And it blew down a significant portion of them, some of these are 6, 8, 10 stories tall — huge trees, 6 feet, 5 feet in diameter. So they came down on roofs," she said.

The cyclone came only a week ahead of a key referendum on a constitution that Myanmar's military leaders hoped would go smoothly in its favor, despite opposition from the country's feisty pro-democracy movement. However, the disaster could stir the already tense political situation.

State radio also said that Saturday's vote would be delayed until May 24 in 40 of 45 townships in the Yangon area and seven in the Irrawaddy delta, which took the brunt of the weekend storm. It indicated that the balloting would proceed in other areas as scheduled.

The decision drew swift criticism from dissidents and human rights groups who question the credibility of the vote and urged the junta to focus on disaster victims.

Myanmar's generals have hailed the referendum as an important step forward in their "roadmap to democracy." It offers the first chance for voters to cast ballots since 1990, and the probability is high they will approve the constitution — a legal framework the country has lacked for two decades.

But critics, including the United Nations, the United States and human rights groups, question whether it will lead to democracy.

Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. Its government has been widely criticized for suppression of pro-democracy parties such as the one led by Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been under house arrest for almost 12 of the past 18 years.

At least 31 people were killed and thousands more were detained when the military cracked down on peaceful protests in September led by Buddhist monks and democracy advocates.

Washington has long been one of the ruling junta's sharpest critics for its poor human rights record and failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080506/ap_o...cAdwGs0NUE

[Richard]

Burma death toll 'likely to hit 80,000'

By ABC correspondent Peter Lloyd and wires

Posted 7 hours 39 minutes ago
Updated 6 hours 39 minutes ago 
 
Burma cyclone death toll 22,000 and rising. (AFP)

Kyi Minn is health adviser for World Vision in Burma and he says that on top of the 22,000 the military regime has admitted have died, there are another 60,000 missing - presumed dead.

ABC correspondent Peter Lloyd reports there are also indications that the massive aid effort is being hampered by a lack of organisation and infrastructure in Burma to distribute the urgently needed supplies.

The storm happened at the weekend, but the military junta's slowness to let international aid agencies in has meant that many devastated areas have still seen no help.

Agencies are still battling to get all the visas and permits they need to do their work in flooded and cyclone-ravaged towns and villages.

More details are emerging from Burma about the scale of death and destruction caused by cyclone Nargis.

Kyi Minn says water is in short supply and power to many communities is still cut.

"We don't have direct communication with them because there is no phone lines and transportation is very limited because of the roads are still blocked and some areas are flooded and you cannot go, so we have to rely on the information that's brought by the eye witnesses there," Mr Minn said.

"So they were saying that the areas there is quite serious. They found a lot of dead bodies there and the sanitation is quite bad over there."

The aid agency save the Children says millions of people have been left homeless in the worst affected region in southern Burma.

The Rangoon-based organisation says there are harrowing accounts emerging of villages where rotting bodies have begun decomposing, posing a serious health risk for survivors.

Aid workers who flew over the southern region said entire villages appear to have been washed away, and seen rice fields strewn with bodies.

Save the Children's country director Andrew Kirkwood said there were unconfirmed reports that people were dying as a result of receiving no supplies of food or clean water since the storm hit on Saturday.

Aid agencies are calling for speedier access to survivors, with Burma's military government still refusing to issue travel visas.

Kyi Minn says the delay in allowing international aid in has created a problem.

"It will be a big problem but we cannot wait for the international aid to come. We have to rely also on the local communities," he said.

"So what we are also doing is we also mobilise the local communities there and nearby villages and there's a very high spirit of voluntarism, so they are also helping each other.

"They bring in food and water supply to the affected area wherever they could - so we are working together with the local communities there."

The United Nations food agency says the cyclone damage to Burma's rice crops may cause food shortages.

The storm has hit an area that produces 65 per cent of the country's rice output, which puts a further strain on the already tight world rice market.

Australia's Ambassador to Burma, Bob Davis, is in Rangoon and he says there is concern the authorities are not doing enough to help the relief effort.

"We are concerned though that they seemed not to be focusing on what is the major priority one would have expected at this stage, and that is to address the humanitarian problems and have that as a priority issue rather than continuing their proposal to proceed with the referendum," Mr Davis said.

Aid hampered

ABC correspondent Peter Lloyd says when aid supplies arrived at Rangoon airport, they had to be unloaded by hand.

"One of the things that was self evident at Rangoon airport yesterday when the Thai military flew in their supplies was that they flew them in on large Hercules type aircraft. When they got there they discovered that there was no forklifts, even at the airport, to move stuff around so they had to get off and do hand to hand, shoulder to shoulder unpacking of the aircraft," he said.

"So, it's at that very elementary level that the infrastructure in Burma because of years of disgraceful behaviour by the regime has left this country bankrupt of the kind of infrastructure it needs to respond to a crisis on this level."

He says the World Health Organisation (WHO) is most clearly concerned with cholera and other water-borne disease breaking out.

"There are descriptions coming out from aid agencies who have flown over the worst hit area in the south, describing villages that have been wiped out and they're seeing rotting bodies in rice fields," he said.

"Now this is the same water supply on which the survivors are going to have to rely for drinking and bathing water. So there's a perfect storm, if you like, a follow up which is confronting these people and with which the aid agencies are desperately trying to negotiate their way into to try to give assistance for."

And he says so far, there are not many signs that the military junta will be doing anything to speed up the delivery of aid.

"Well on past indications you'd have to say, thinking back to our coverage of the tsunami disaster in 2004, the regime at first ignored, denied and effectively blamed. They said the scale of the disaster in their country was nowhere near what it later was revealed to have been. The resources simply weren't thrown at Burma because they said they didn't need it," he said.

"Now the regime is showing no greater signs of opening up at the moment. They've let in supplies from some of the ASEAN friendly nations like Thailand who have used military aircraft to move some pretty elementary stuff in, but the scale of the disaster clearly calls for a much larger operation and so far the regime doesn't seem to have acknowledged that, either in public or in practice by rewarding the organisations who need to get in there with the visas."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/...tion=world

[Astrojewels]

This is how I see it, we have thousands upon thousands of people who at this very moment are feeling desperate, they have no communication to the outside world, and the leaders refusing to let aid in, http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/let-...69719.html

What are the leaders telling the people? We have a ‘natural disaster’ a few days before an election that is/was proposing to change the entire system/country. This area and surrounding countries are a target and will continue to be over the next few years.

[Richard]

It sounds like they're letting aid in now.

Official: UN plane lands in Myanmar with aid after cyclone

YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar's isolationist regime allowed the first plane of a major international airlift to land Thursday with aid for cyclone survivors, a U.N. official said, amid fears that lack of safe food and drinking water could push the death toll above 100,000.

But the junta was not allowing U.S. military planes to fly in critical relief goods and continued to stall on visas for U.N. teams urgently seeking entry to ensure aid is delivered to the victims.

A U.N. official said one airplane from Italy arrived in Yangon while three more would land later Thursday. The official did not wish to be named because she was not authorized to speak to the media.

Four planes loaded with high-energy biscuits, medicine and other supplies have waited for the last two days while frustrated U.N. officials negotiated with the military regime to allow the material into the Southeast Asian nation.

The U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Eric John told reporters that U.S. and Thai authorities earlier believe they had permission from Myanmar to land U.S. military C-130s. But Myanmar officials later made it clear that this was not the case.

John said it was not clear if they had reversed an earlier decision or if there was a misunderstanding.

Thailand's Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej offered to negotiate on Washington's behalf to persuade the junta to accept U.S. aid.

Myanmar's state media said Cyclone Nargis killed at least 22,980 people and left 42,119 missing, mostly in the hardest-hit Irrawaddy delta. But a top U.S. diplomat said Wednesday the toll could exceed 100,000.

Entire villages in the delta were still submerged from the storm, and bloated corpses could be seen stuck in the mangroves. Some survivors stripped clothes off the dead. People wailed as they described the horror of the torrent swept ashore by the cyclone.

"I don't know what happened to my wife and young children," said Phan Maung, 55, who held onto a coconut tree until the water level dropped. By then his family was gone.

The World Health Organization has received reports of malaria outbreaks in the worst-affected area, and fears of waterborne illnesses surfacing due to dirty water and poor sanitation also remained a concern, said Poonam Khetrapal Singh, deputy director of WHO's Southeast Asia office in New Delhi.

"Safe water, sanitation, safe food. These are things that we feel are priorities at the moment," she said.

Myanmar's generals, traditionally paranoid about foreign influence, issued an appeal for international assistance after the storm struck Saturday. They have since dragged their feet on issuing visas to relief workers even as survivors faced hunger, disease and flooding.

Even near Yangon, the country's largest city, stricken villagers complained that they had received no government assistance and were relying on Buddhist monasteries, which have been helping the public cope with the disaster.

"The government is not helping us. No aid is coming. There is no money, no rice," said Mu Sanda, one of some 50 people huddled in a monastery dining room converted into an evacuation center in Kyauktan, 15 miles southeast of Yangon.

Even China, Myanmar's closest ally, urged the military junta to work with the international community. Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said China would give $4.3 million in aid in addition to an initial pledge of $1 million.

A U.N. spokesman in Bangkok, Richard Horsey, said between 30 and 40 visas requested by various U.N. agencies and private relief groups are pending with the Myanmar government.

"These are mostly people who have key experience in handling disasters of this scale, and so they can bring lessons from other similar disasters," he said. "The agencies are becoming frustrated."

The London-based human rights group Amnesty International said some donors were delaying aid for fear it would be siphoned off to the army.

WFP's regional director, Anthony Banbury, indicated the United Nations had similar concerns.

"We will not just bring our supplies to an airport, dump it and take off," he said. "This is one reason why there is a hold up now, because we are going to bring in not just supplies but a lot of capacity to go with them to make sure the supplies get to the people."

Myanmar's state television Thursday showed Prime Minister Lt. Gen. Thein Sein distributing food packages to the sick and injured in the delta and soldiers dropping food over villages. The date of the distribution was not given.

Navy vessels from India and planes from Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Laos and Bangladesh had arrived in recent days with medicine, candles, instant noodles, raincoats and other relief supplies, it said.

Although most Yangon residents were preoccupied with trying to restore their lives, activists using the cover of an almost-total power outage have written fresh graffiti on overpasses.

The graffiti include "X" marks — a symbol for voting "no" in a referendum Saturday on a new military-backed constitution. Voting has been postponed until May 24 in Yangon, some outlying areas and parts of the delta heavily damaged by the storm.

Shari Villarosa, who heads the U.S. Embassy in Yangon, said the number of dead could eventually exceed 100,000 because safe food and water were scarce and unsanitary conditions widespread.

U.N. officials estimated as many as 1 million people were left homeless in Myanmar, which also is known as Burma.

Among them were the villagers in the Kyauktan monastery who said they had nowhere else to seek shelter and lacked food, water and money to rebuild their homes and rehabilitate their ruined rice fields.

Others in Kyauktan sought refuge in a primary school adjacent to the monastery where desks in classrooms were pushed together for makeshift beds.

Monks said they were receiving donations from the public and wealthier shop owners and then distributing them among the victims.

In Yangon, the roof of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was blown off and she was living in the dark after the electricity connection to her dilapidated lakeside bungalow was snapped in the cyclone, a neighbor said.

The detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate was using candles at night since she had no generator in her home, where she is being held under house arrest, said the neighbor, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

State radio said "unscrupulous elements" were spreading rumors of an impending earthquake, a second cyclone and looting in Yangon. Residents say some looting occurred at markets and stores in suburbs of Yangon earlier this week.

The warning about rumors appeared to be an attempt to calm the population as well as stop any gatherings that might turn into political agitation against widely detested military rule.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080508/ap_o...mDpfis0NUE

[Polly]

More trauma on top of trauma. (And the mass of confused souls which passed over and are in need of assistance, and protection from the dark forces, must be overwhelming):

Yahoo! Alerts

Friday, May 9, 2008, 8:27 AM PDT

GENEVA (AP) U.N. weather agency forecasts heavy rains in Myanmar next week.
*****************************************

I read somewhere yesterday that they prefer aid from other Asian countries only. On the surface of things, and I know it goes much deeper than that, I can't say I blame them. Once a country accepts aid they then feel indebted. Once a country opens itself to outside intervention, things will never be the same. In the name of intervention on this planet, the ideal never matches the reality. Things are breaking apart around the world though, for good or ill.

[Astrojewels]

We are still hearing that there is trouble getting in, and the people don’t want their faces on the television due to fear, feeling they would be indebted to a country by accepting assistance is the worst excuse I have ever heard, statements like that prove that the whole thing is a big scam. I totally agree Polly with what you say on all those souls leaving the physical and the mind-pattern that is leaving with them.

[Mercy Now]

AJ,

Are you comfortable in sharing with us who you believe targeted Myanmar? I haven't followed their political situation due to time constraints but I'm not even sure the attack is from of this planet.

Okay ,I'm off to a rehearsal dinner........

[Astrojewels]

MN,
I don’t usually focus on the who, I feel that I am past that, because to me that is not important, I usually focus on the ‘what’, I said many months ago that Indonesia, and the southern Asian countries would be the first to feel the force of Capricorn mars, and begin to implode because this is the energy of this cycle, Capricorn can be brutally straightforward.
Every country in the world has a collective pattern of thought, and I don’t want to sound or be taken as heartless, and although these events are usually intentional, the collective pattern must be there to begin with.
We are currently experiencing a global collective emotion of uniting, which began with “WWW’ and the mind pattern of the countries that resist this occurrence will be faced with situations that give the choice to take assistance or allow their people to die in front of their eyes, and the countries that assist grow stronger. It is so much bigger than this terrible event, but this is one in the many that will follow, and I don’t like to say it but it is the truth.

WWW- We walk willingly. Which translates to we walk through life without being forced, holding hands without fear or force.

Hope you enjoyed your dinner, how exciting.