Cyclone kills 4,000 in one town alone

A BURMA state radio station yesterday said close to 4,000 people were killed and nearly 3,000 others are unaccounted for in a single town after the devastating Tropical Cyclone Nargis swept through.

The cyclone hit the south-eastern Asian country, early on Saturday with winds of up to 190 km/h. The cyclone blew roofs off hospitals and schools and cut electricity in Burma’s largest city, Yangon.

An announcement on state television increased the death toll from Tropical Cyclone Nargis more than ten-fold in the country which is one of the poorest on the planet.

It said more than 2,100 people were missing and that tens of thousands more could have perished in other regions — areas where rescue workers had not yet been able to gauge the full scope of the destruction.

The government had previously put the death toll countrywide at 351 before increasing it to 3,939. It has now been suggested the death toll could top 10,000.

The radio station broadcasting from the country’s capital, Naypyitaw, said that 2,879 more people are unaccounted for in a single town, Bogalay, in the country’s low-lying Irrawaddy River delta area where the storm wreaked the most havoc.

The situation in the countryside remained unclear due to poor communications and roads left impassable by the storm.

“It’s clear that we’re dealing with a very serious situation. The full extent of the impact and needs will require an extensive on-the-ground assessment,” said Richard Horsey, a spokesman in Bangkok, Thailand for United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“What is clear at this point is that there are several hundred thousand people in dire need of shelter and clean drinking water,” said Horsey.

Officials from Burma’s military government met yesterday with representatives of international aid agencies to discuss providing assistance.

The private aid agency World Vision said Burma’s government had invited it “to provide assistance in the form of zinc sheets, tents, tarpaulins and medicine.”

Residents in Yangon, were plunged into a primitive existence, using candles instead of electricity, lining up to buy shrinking supplies of water and hacking their way through streets blocked by trees felled in the cyclone.

Public transportation was at a near standstill and vehicles had to cope with navigating without traffic lights. Many stayed away from their jobs, either because they could not find transportation or because they had to seek food and shelter for their families.

“Without my daily earning, just survival has become a big problem for us,” said Tin Hla, who normally repairs umbrellas at a roadside stand.

With his shanty town house destroyed by the storm, Tin Hla said he has had to place his family of five into one of the monasteries that have offered temporary shelter to the many homeless.

Despite the havoc wreaked by the cyclone across wide swaths of the country, the government indicated that a referendum on the country’s draft constitution would proceed as planned on May 10.

“It’s only a few days left before the coming referendum and people are eager to cast their vote,” the state-owned newspaper said Myanma Ahlin.

Pro-democracy groups in the country and many international critics have branded the constitution as merely a tool for the military’s continued grip on power.

Should the junta be seen as failing disaster victims, voters who already blame the regime for ruining the economy and squashing democracy could take out their frustrations at the ballot box.

Thai government spokesman Wichianchote Sukchotrat said the ruling junta had asked for food, medical supplies and construction equipment, easing fears that the ruling junta would reject international aid.

The foreign ministry in Yangon called resident ambassadors to a meeting and some diplomats said they expected the government to request emergency assistance from other countries.

Some in Yangon complained the 400,000-strong military was doing little to help victims after Saturday’s storm, only clearing streets where the ruling elite resided but leaving residents to cope on their own in most other areas.

Residents, as well as Buddhist monks from the city’s many monasteries, banded together, wielding axes and knives to clear roads of tree trunks and branches torn off by the cyclone’s winds.

Several residents said the streets were like forests, scattered as they were with trees and debris.

Most telephone landlines, mobile phones and Internet connections were down. But airlines announced Yangon’s international airport had reopened. The city was plunged into almost total darkness overnight, security concerns mounted, with reports of robberies in some working class suburbs circulating. Many shops sold their goods through partially opened doors or iron grills. Looting was reported at several fresh food markets, where thieves took vegetables and other items.

The UN plans to send teams to assess the damage, said Chris Kaye, the UN’s acting humanitarian co-ordinator in Yangon. Initial assessment efforts had been hampered by roads clogged with debris and downed phone lines, he added.

The United States said yesterday that it is providing an initial sum of $250,000 (€161,231) in aid to cyclone-ravaged Burma through its embassy in Yangon.

State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey told reporters that a US disaster assistance response team was “standing by and ready to go into Burma to help try and assess needs there,” but had apparently not received permission from the ruling junta in Yangon.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel indicated earlier that aid released through the embassy “will go through the world food programme and other aid entities, so it doesn’t necessarily go directly through the government.”

Referring to the immediate embassy aid, Casey told AFP later: “This is an initial contribution. It is not intended to the full extent of US assistance.”

Casey said the US embassy in Yangon had decided or was moving toward allowing non-essential US personnel and families to leave Burma temporarily because public services had deteriorated following the cyclone.

He added he was “unaware of any Americans affected, injured or killed” by the storm.

Burma has been under military rule since 1962.

Its government has been widely criticised 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.