Myanmar cyclone death tops 15,000; many more missing
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At least 15,000 people were killed and up to 30,000 missing as a result of a huge storm surge that accompanied a devastating cyclone in Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta, officials said on Tuesday, warning the toll was likely to rise as rescuers reached remote areas. (UPDATED)
Foreign Minister Nyan Win said on state television that 10,000 people had died in just one town, Bogalay, as he gave the first detailed account of the worst cyclone to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people died in Bangladesh, Reuters reported.
Thailand's foreign minister, Noppadol Pattama, said after a meeting with Myanmar's ambassador to Bangkok that he had been told 30,000 people were missing following Friday's devastating storm.
"The losses have been much greater than we anticipated," Noppadol said after ambassador Ye Win declined to speak to reporters.
The cyclone destroyed 95 percent of the homes in the city of Bogalay, the minister for social welfare Maung Maung Swe told AFP on Tuesday.
The total left homeless by the 190 kilometer (120 miles) per hour winds and 12 foot (3.5 meter) storm surge is in the several hundred thousands, United Nations aid officials say, and could run into the millions.
The scale of the disaster drew a rare acceptance of outside help from the diplomatically isolated generals, who spurned such approaches in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Bernard Delpuech, a European Union aid official in Yangon, said the junta had sent three ships carrying food to the delta region, the rice bowl for Myanmar's 53 million people. Nearly half the population resides in the five disaster-hit states.
"MASSIVE, TERRIBLE"
Aid agency World Vision in Australia said it had been granted special visas to send in personnel to back up 600 staff in the impoverished Southeast Asian country.
"This is massive. It is not necessarily quite tsunami level, but in terms of impact of millions displaced, thousands dead, it is just terrible," World Vision Australia head Tim Costello said.
"Organizations like ours have been given permission, which is pretty unprecedented, to fly people in. This shows how grave it is in the Burmese government's mind," he said.
The town-by-town list of dead and missing announced by Nyan Win showed 14,859 deaths in the Irrawaddy division and 59 in Yangon, the biggest city of five million and the former capital.
The hardest-hit area was the Irrawaddy region where about 10,000 people died in Bogalay, 90 kilometers (55 miles) southwest of Yangon.
In Yangon people were queuing up for bottled water and there was still no electricity four days after the vicious Cyclone Nargis struck.
"Generators are selling very well under the generals," said one man waiting outside a shop, reflecting some of the resentment on the streets to what many described as a slow warning and response.
Very few soldiers were seen clearing debris and trees, except at major intersections, residents in the former capital said. Monks and residents, using what tools they had, cut trees.
The junta has moved even further into the shadows in the last six months due to widespread outrage at its bloody crackdown on protests led by Buddhist monks in September.
ENOUGH RICE
Cyclone-battered Myanmar has enough rice for domestic consumption despite damage to some grain stores in the Irrawaddy delta, a minister in the military government said on Tuesday.
Information Minister Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan referred to the agreement made prior to the storm to provide 50,000 tons of rice to Sri Lanka, but he did not elaborate in the first news conference on the storm.
The United Nations World Food Program fears that the cyclone and flooding in two major rice growing areas could also affect food supply in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
"I think there was some damage to rice stored by private merchants and growers, but we have enough surplus for domestic needs," Information Minister Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan said in the badly-damaged former capital of Yangon.
World Food Program spokesman Paul Risley said in Bangkok on Monday that it was too early yet to assess the damage to crops in the main rice-producing regions.
Myanmar state media said in April the country had exported about 400,000 tons of rice in the past year because it had enough supplies to feed its 53 million people.
Global stocks for the staple food of half of the world's population have halved since hitting a record high in 2001. Prices in Asia have almost trebled this year as export restrictions by leading suppliers fuel insecurity over food supplies.
Photo: Reuters