Thousands dead in Burmese Cyclone

[Dartzap]

Beeb

Aid call as Burma casualties rise

International agencies are pushing to gain access for a massive aid operation in Burma, where the toll from Saturday's cyclone continues to rise.

State media say 10,000 people died in one town alone, and put the number of dead at 15,000.

Hundreds of thousands of people are said to be without clean water and shelter, with some areas still cut-off.

Burma's leaders say they will accept external help, in a move correspondents say reflects the scale of the disaster.

The military government has traditionally been suspicious of aid agencies, limiting their activities.

But Andrew Kirkwood, Burma country director for Save the Children, said there were positive signs from the Burmese authorities.

"Every indication is that everyone realises that this is an unprecedented event in Myanmar's [Burma's] history and the government is much more open to international assistance than it has ever been."

Mr Kirkwood said that responding to the devastation would be a major logistical feat, requiring boats and trucks.

Work is still under way to assess the scale of the devastation caused by the cyclone, which brought winds reaching 190km/h (120mph).

'Dire need'

In the low-lying Irrawaddy Delta region, the storm caused a sea surge that smashed through towns and villages.

"Reports are coming out of the delta coast, particularly the Irrawaddy region, that in some villages up to 95% of houses have been destroyed," said Matthew Cochrane of the International Red Cross.

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Aerial footage of the cyclone aftermath

Ten thousand people died in the town of Bogalay alone, state media said.

The storm destroyed roads, downed power lines and flattened houses, leaving people across the region homeless.

"What is clear at this point is that there are several hundred thousands of people in dire need of shelter and clean drinking water," said Richard Horsey, Bangkok-based spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Prices of food, fuel and basic necessities have also risen dramatically in the wake of the storm, putting more people at risk.

'No warning'

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the UN would do "whatever [necessary] to provide urgent humanitarian assistance".

A shipment of aid from Thailand is due to arrive on Tuesday and India is sending two naval vessels.

The US has also offered to increase aid offered if Burma agrees to allow a US team access to assess the situation.

First Lady Laura Bush, who takes a special interest in Burma, urged Burma to accept $250,000 (£126,000) already allocated for emergency aid, and said more would be available if the team was allowed into the country.

But she accused the Burmese authorities of failing to give a "timely warning" about the approaching storm.

In Rangoon, residents complained that the government response to the disaster has been weak.

"The government misled people," one grocery store owner told the Associated Press news agency. "They could have warned us about the severity of the coming cyclone so we could be better prepared."

Despite the disaster, military leaders there still plan to hold a nationwide referendum on a new constitution on 10 May.

The ruling junta says the charter will bring elections, but critics say it will help the military retain its iron grip on power.

Thats just..horrific.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

If I am to be cynical, the Junta didn't warn them deliberately like some kind of divine punishment to punish the people for defying them last year.

[weemadando]

I was very dubious on Sunday when the junta came out with the: "It's ok, there are only 10 ten."

Amazingly, that was justified. Whodathunkit?

That said, maybe Burma can now be leveraged into some human rights concessions in order to get the aid they desperately need.

[weemadando]

That's "10 dead." I am awesome.

[HemlockGrey]

That said, maybe Burma can now be leveraged into some human rights concessions in order to get the aid they desperately need.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if it came down to dead villagers or a looser grip on power the generals wouldn't consider that a tough decision.

[weemadando]

It's not dead villagers by itself though. From the sounds of things it's their major rice production areas that got fucked, not to mention a lot of the infrastructure in Rangoon itself.

That's what makes me think that there might be enough to work with. Plus the riots earlier in the year are still in a few peoples memories and the footage is fresh enough that it can be wheeled back out onto CNN again if need be.

[NecronLord]

Poor people.


*Sigh*

[Stuart]

If I am to be cynical, the Junta didn't warn them deliberately like some kind of divine punishment to punish the people for defying them last year.

If they did, its bounced back on them. The Irawaddy is reporting that people in Myanmar are looking at the Cyclone as divine retribution for the regime's assault on the Monks back last September. Than Shwe is incredibly superstitious, he never does anything without consulting astrologers, so the same thought may well have occurred to him

The death toll is up to 22,500 now with more than 40,000 missing.

[hongi]

Jesus. In a matter of days, tens of thousands dead. Hard to imagine really.

[cosmicalstorm]

Yes it will be interesting to see how the regime reacts, the leaders supposedly moved the entire capital largely because their astrologers said so.

[VT-16]

In a matter of days, tens of thousands dead. Hard to imagine really.

Not really.[/url]

[FSTargetDrone]

Now they are saying it's over 22,000 dead:

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

5 hours ago

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar state radio says the cyclone death toll has risen above 22,000.

A news broadcast on government-run radio said Tuesday that 22,464 people have now been confirmed dead and thousands more are missing.

Cyclone Nargis tore through the country's heartland and largest city, Yangon, early Saturday.

Relief efforts have been difficult, in large part because the storm destroyed roads and communications outlets.

The first assistance from overseas arrived Tuesday from neighboring Thailand.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar officials said on Tuesday the death toll could continue to climb higher than the 14,000 already feared dead from the Southeast Asian nation's devastating cyclone as the international community prepared to rush in aid.

In the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, state radio reported that the government was delaying a constitutional referendum in areas hit hardest.

Myanmar's Information Minister Maj. Gen. Kyaw Hsan confirmed at a news conference that some 4,000 people had died in Yangon and the low-lying Irrawaddy delta region. He added that another 10,000 people could be dead in the delta.

Kyaw said tidal waves killed most of the victims in that region.

Earlier, Foreign Minister Nyan Win was quoted by state-run television as saying that more than 10,000 people had perished in Irrawaddy while a smaller number died in and around Yangon, the country's largest city.

"News and data are still being collected, so there may be many more casualties," he said.

It was not known why the two ministers presented different death tolls.

The World Food Program, which was preparing to fly in food, added its own grim assessment of the destruction: Up to 1 million people may be homeless, some villages have been almost totally eradicated and vast rice-growing areas are wiped out.

A state television report gave two different numbers — 59 and 130 — for the dead in what is known as Yangon division. It did not explain the differing tolls.

The country's ruling junta, which has spurned the international community for decades, urgently appealed for foreign aid at a meeting Nyan Win held with diplomats Monday in Yangon.

The U.N.'s emergency relief coordinator said Tuesday the government had indicated it was ready to start accepting international aid. The U.N., Red Cross and other aid organizations have been organizing supplies in preparation for shipping them to the country.

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.

A military transport plane flew from Bangkok to Yangon Tuesday with emergency aid from Thailand while a number of other countries and organizations said they were prepared to follow.

Richard Horsey, Bangkok-based spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid, said Yangon's airport is the closest to the region hardest hit.

"For those places accessible by land, there will be cars and trucks from those areas to meet at the halfway point with vehicles from Yangon," he said. "For remote areas, assessment teams and assistance teams will need to go by helicopters and boats."

The delta is riddled with waterways but Horsey said they are not easily accessible, even during normal times.

Based on a satellite map made available by the United Nations, the storm's damage was concentrated over about a 11,600-square-mile (30,000-square-kilometer) area along the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Martaban coastlines — less than 5 percent of the country.

But the affected region is home to nearly a quarter of Myanmar's 57 million people.

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

"More or less all the landlines are down and it's extremely difficult to get information from cyclone-affected areas. But from the reports we are getting, entire villages have been flattened and the final death toll may be huge," said Mac Pieczowski, who heads the International Organization for Migration office in Yangon, in a statement.

State radio reported Saturday's vote on a draft constitution would be delayed until May 24 in 40 townships around Yangon and seven in the Irrawaddy delta, which bore the brunt of the killer storm.

It indicated that in other areas the balloting would proceed as scheduled.

The appeal for assistance was unusual for Myanmar's ruling generals, who have long been suspicious of the international organizations and have closely controlled their activities.

Foreign governments were poised Tuesday to rush aid to the devastated nation.

The United States, which has slapped economic sanctions on the country, said it likewise stood ready. The U.S. Embassy is providing $250,000 in immediate aid from existing emergency fund. But first lady Laura Bush said Monday the U.S. would provide further aid only if one of its own disaster teams is allowed into the country.

The European Commission was providing $3 million in humanitarian aid while the president of neighboring China, Hu Jintao, promised $1 million in cash and supplies.

The government had apparently taken few efforts to prepare for the storm, which came bearing down on the country from the Bay of Bengal late Friday. Weather warnings broadcast on television would have been largely useless for the worst-hit rural areas where electricity supply is spotty and television a rarity.

"The government misled people," said Thin Thin, a grocery story owner in Yangon. "They could have warned us about the severity of the coming cyclone so we could be better prepared."

Yangon was without electricity except where gas-fed generators were available and residents lined up to buy candles, which have doubled in price since the storm hit. Most homes were without water, forcing families to stand in long lines for drinking water and bathe in the city's lakes.

Most telephone landlines appeared to be restored by late Monday, but mobile phones and Internet connections were down.

Some in Yangon complained that the 400,000-strong military was only clearing streets where the ruling elite resided but leaving residents, including Buddhist monks, to cope on their own in most other areas.

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 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, 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.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

If I am to be cynical, the Junta didn't warn them deliberately like some kind of divine punishment to punish the people for defying them last year.

If they did, its bounced back on them. The Irawaddy is reporting that people in Myanmar are looking at the Cyclone as divine retribution for the regime's assault on the Monks back last September. Than Shwe is incredibly superstitious, he never does anything without consulting astrologers, so the same thought may well have occurred to him

The death toll is up to 22,500 now with more than 40,000 missing.

Well, what happens next depends on whether the people have any fight left in them.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Incidentally, a large portion of the Burmese rice crop has been destroyed by this cyclone.

Guess what that means when the world is already in the middle of a major rice shortage and grain is following on its heels?

It's a bad time to live in the third world. Moreso than usual, that is...

[hongi]

Lets hope not:

Burma death toll 'likely to hit 80,000'

An aid official in Burma says the death toll from Cyclone Nargis may be 80,000 or more.

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.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

It's happened before, though this would place it pushing toward the same range as the Tsunami (230,000), but, certainly plausible.

[CJvR]

To make matters worse the Junta isn't to keen on letting aid and aid workers in. It is better that a few thousand more peasants die than risk letting in a reporter among the aid workers or lose the oppertunity to steal aid shipments (by insisting on "distributing" it themselves).

[cosmicalstorm]

100.000 is the latest, this is on par with the tsunami.

[Phantasee]

Apparently it's the worst cyclone to hit the area since 1991, when a cyclone killed 143 000 people in Bangladesh. So much death...

[Broomstick]

The worst of it - there didn't have to be so many dead

In a storm this bad you will get deaths, but there could have been more warnings, there could have been evacuations, there could have been supplies distributed and in place BEFORE it hit... so many "might have beens" wasted. Granted, this would probably not have gone even as smoothly as Katrina - and we all know there were fuck-ups with Katrina despite evacuating something close to a million people from the area prior to the storm - but SOME could have been saved. The storm was on weather radar for days prior to landfall, if they had asked for help moving people or getting supplies in place beforehand they would have been helped.

Delaying aid... inexcusable. There will be enough problems getting aid to the worst-hit areas. Human-made obstacles - unconscionable.

There didn't have to be so much death. We probably couldn't have staved off the devastation, but you can't rebuild without strong backs.

A devastated rice crop just adds insult to injury.

[TheMuffinKing]

Yahoo: Myanmar seizes aid shipments

YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar's junta seized U.N. aid shipments Friday meant for a multitude of hungry and homeless survivors of last week's devastating cyclone, forcing the world body to suspend further help.
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The aid included 38 tons of high-energy biscuits and arrived in Myanmar on Friday on two flights from Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.

"All of the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated," U.N. World Food Program spokesman Risley said.

"For the time being, we have no choice but to end further efforts to bring critical needed food aid into Myanmar at this time," he said.

At least 62,000 people are dead or missing in Myanmar, entire villages are submerged in the Irrawaddy delta and aid groups warned that the area is on the verge of a medical disaster.

The U.N. has grown increasingly critical of Myanmar's military rulers' refusal to let foreign aid workers into the country while the junta appeared overwhelmed and more than 1 million homeless people waited for food, medicine and shelter.

"The frustration caused by what appears to be a paperwork delay is unprecedented in modern humanitarian relief efforts," Risley said. "It's astonishing."

The junta said in a statement Friday it was grateful to the international community for its assistance — which has included 11 chartered planes loaded with aid supplies — but the best way to help was just to send in material rather than personnel.

Nearly a week after the storm, survivors are now having to contend with rotting corpses of people and animals as they wait for food, clean water and medicine.

"Many are not buried and lie in the water. They have started rotting and the stench is beyond words," Anders Ladekarl, head of the Danish Red Cross.

About 20,000 body bags were being sent so volunteers from the Myanmar chapter of the Red Cross can start collecting bodies, he said.

The U.N. was putting together an urgent appeal to fund aid efforts over the next six months. Spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs told reporters that the exact amount of the appeal would be specified later Friday.

The International Organization for Migration says it is asking for $8 million as part of the appeal. The U.N. refugee agency says it needs $6 million to fund the immediate shelter and household needs of 250,000 people.

[Lonestar]

The Indonesian Military tried to do the same in the '04 Tsunami. Of course,t hat aid relief was facilitated by the American, french, Australian, and Singaporean militaries.

It turns out the Indonesian military had a hard time intimidating any of 'em.

[Stuart]

The Indonesian Military tried to do the same in the '04 Tsunami. Of course,t hat aid relief was facilitated by the American, french, Australian, and Singaporean militaries. It turns out the Indonesian military had a hard time intimidating any of 'em.

And people wonder why we had an aircraft carrier sitting offshore.......

Interesting note; the Royal Thai Air Force sent a C-130 load of supplies to Myanmar and its still not clear that any permission was granted. Apparently the bird just landed, unloaded its supplies to "Save The Children" (the first aid agency the crew could find) and left. Of course, that's officially denied

I do know that the executive agency for collecting and delivering aid for Myanmar in Thailand is the Royal Thai Army. Given that the RTA would go through the ramshackle Tatmidaw like the proverbial shit through a goose, I can't help wondering if that's a threat.

[Lonestar]

And people wonder why we had an aircraft carrier sitting offshore.......

I was with ESG5, so we had quite a deal more than just an aircraft carrier offshore, not including the Singaporean LPD and the Jeanne D'Arc.

And the damn Indian Frigate that followed us around and did nothing.


Of course, the articles are talking about lack of drinking water, and I can't help but think taking several Amphibs, dropping anchor, and use the condensors to provide freshwater to the afflicted ashore would be a great way to mitigate the problem.

Doubt the Junta would like to have an ESG sitting less than a mile off the coast, though.

[Stuart]

I was with ESG5, so we had quite a deal more than just an aircraft carrier offshore, not including the Singaporean LPD and the Jeanne D'Arc.

I know, but its the carrier people poked fun at. I mean the one thing one doesn't need at a disaster scene is a mobile airport with a huge inate ability to provide fresh food and clean water....

And the damn Indian Frigate that followed us around and did nothing.

Most people think that an Indian frigate is a self-contained mobile disaster area. The Indian Fleet is the only Navy I know of to have had a cholera outbreak on board ship.

Of course, the articles are talking about lack of drinking water, and I can't help but think taking several Amphibs, dropping anchor, and use the condensors to provide freshwater to the afflicted ashore would be a great way to mitigate the problem.

Agreed. And use the LCACs to get the supplies inland fast - that way they can completely bypass the local authorities and deliver the food directly to those who need it,. With a couple of Marines on board to make sure would-be hijackers have their attitudes corrected. Thats the way it was done in Bangladesh. (Tale from the crypt for you. During the aftermath to Hurricane Katrina, a group of Bangladeshis turned up at the US Embassy in Dhaka in a beat-up old truck with sacks of rice on board. Their leader said that their village remembered how the Americans had come to their village to help them during their great flood, now they wanted to do what they could to help us.)

Doubt the Junta would like to have an ESG sitting less than a mile off the coast, though.

I think they'd love it. They'd be quite dumbstruck with delight. So would the Myanmarese people who keep writing to the US Embassy in Bangkok, pleading for some American air strikes.