The district of Pyinsalu, on the southwestern tip of Burma, is one of the most
obscure, remote and impoverished places in the world, but it will go down in
history for a uniquely grim distinction. Three and a half years ago it was
washed away by the surge of the Boxing Day tsunami; over time, the
collection of small coastal villages was rebuilt and the simple life of the
fishermen returned to normal.
Then, nine days ago, Cyclone Nargis gathered force over the Bay of Bengal and
pounded the exposed fields and rivers of the Irrawaddy delta. And Pyinsalu,
so insignificant that it appears only on the most detailed of maps, achieved
something unprecedented: it was wiped out for a second time by the region’s
worst natural disasters in living memory.
It takes five hours by boat to reach Pyinsalu and none of the handful of
foreign aid workers based in the nearest town, Labutta, has been allowed to
travel there. But reports from survivors who have reached Labutta suggest
that it is among the most stricken of all the devastated areas in the
disaster zone.
Before the cyclone 12,000 people lived in the Pyinsalu subdistrict; the best
estimates are that barely a quarter of them are still alive. The only
buildings left standing are a school and a severely damaged health centre.
The accounts of the few survivors tell of the appallingly destructive force
of the cyclone and the terror of a catastrophe that turned trees into deadly
projectiles and solid land into water.
From Burma’s biggest city, Rangoon, to Labutta it is a jolting, 11-hour drive.
Fifteen miles from the end of it, late yesterday afternoon, we met the
survivors of the worst of the storm. They were three men, simply dressed in
cotton shirts and Burmese sarongs — widowers of Cyclone Nargis.
Each had lost his wife and all his children; they had travelled to Labutta to
inform the brother of one of the dead women and to say the traditional
prayers for their families seven days after their deaths. But they could not
afford the offerings at the Buddhist temple necessary to earn merit for
their dead children. “The Government came and gave us some food, but for the
first days we had no water and no food except coconuts,” Aung Htan Tay, from
the village of Kakayo, near Pyinsalu, said.
Mr Tay, a fisherman, was at home when the wind and rain began on the night of
Friday, May 1. The waters rose quickly and overwhelmed the house of bamboo
and palm leaves. “We ran out and I climbed up a tree,” he said. “My wife
held on to my waist, but the water was too strong.” He climbed 14ft up the
tree and clung on for three hours while the water surged just two feet below
his toes.
When they receded, he found the body of his oldest child, a 7-year-old girl,
close to the bottom of the tree. For a week, he looked for his wife and his
two sons, aged 4 and 1. Two days ago, he gave up.
His two companions, Zaw Khin Oo and Tun Than Lin, have similar stories. All
have marks on their inner arms where the rough bark of the palm trees rubbed
their skin. On Mr Oo’s back is an area of raw flesh resembling a burn,
caused by the lashing wind, rain and hail. At a stroke each became wifeless,
childless, homeless and without any means of supporting themselves.
The atmosphere of crisis is obvious as soon as you enter the town of Labutta.
Not a single building is undamaged; the streets are littered with fallen
trees and the crumpled orange and white frame of a giant telecommunications
mast. Large lorries line the town centre, unloading supplies of rice and
canned fish supplied by the Government and by aid groups such as Médecins
Sans Frontières and the World Food Programme.
It is wholly inadequate for the immense population of refugees, both the
homeless of Labutta and the tens of thousands of people who have arrived
from the obliterated coastal districts to the south, such as Pyinsalu.
The British charity Merlin estimates that a town of 30,000 people has
increased by 70,000 to 80,000. “The needs are great and we’re definitely
very concerned about health risks if health care is not made available,”
Paula Sansom, a nurse with the organisation, said. “We’re concerned about
the forecast of bad weather next week — there is a lack of food and lack of
shelter and a small window of opportunity to remedy that.”
The situation is complicated, as it has been throughout this tragedy, by the
disposition of the Burmese authorities, who appear to inspire as much fear
as they bring relief.
Military teams have been delivering certain amounts of aid, and Merlin, for
one, was promptly issued with visas for incoming staff by the Burmese
Embassy in London. But the obligation of foreign staff from non-governmental
organisations to obtain bureaucratic permission for travel outside town
limits the scope of their work.
UN staff in Rangoon express alarm at the way in which approximately 16,000
refugees have been transported from Labutta and the town of Bogalay to
refugee camps in less affected towns to the north. In theory these
relocations are not compulsory, and conditions in the new camps are
undoubtedly better than those in the disaster zone. But the refugees find
themselves cut off from local networks of family and friends and parted from
their villages in the all-important rice planting season.
Eighty per cent of Burma’s rice is planted in the next few weeks, much of in
the Irrawaddy delta. The inundation of fields by salt water is bad enough,
but the relocation of the farming population makes the chances of a
successful crop all the slimmer — in a year when food aid will be needed the
most.
“We mustn’t miss this rice crop, and I’m worried,” said Hakan
Tongkul of the World Food Programme in Rangoon. “We’ve had no good answer
why they’re moving these people. Is it so they can look after them better?
But they won’t let us look after them where they are.”
Relief effort
— Burma’s state television set the number of dead at 28,458 and the number of
missing at 33,416 yesterday
— A United Nations Humanitarian appeal has asked for $187,298,154 for aid
(£96,122,244) including $56,000,000 for food and $20,300,000 for shelter
— Latest reports suggest that $33,584,377 (£17,235,935) has been donated so
far, with a further $42,752,353 in uncommitted pledges
— The US has donated $3,250,000 and the European Commission has given
$3,135,264
— Britain has pledged up to £5 million for relief efforts
— France has sent a naval ship with 1,500 tonnes of food, blankets and other
supplies as well as contributing about $320,000
— The Burma Red Cross is distributing insecticide-treated bed nets and water
purification tablets. The Government is to give 5 billion kyats ($4.5
million) for relief and resettlement
— The World Food Programme (WFP) had reached 27,000 people by the weekend, and
the 38 tonnes of high-energy biscuits – seized in Rangoon on Friday – were
returned
— The WFP flew into Rangoon with supplies such as temporary warehousing and
generators Sources: UN; agencies
This end of an age inevitably produces natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes, and we are seeing an increase in the number of disasters around the world taking place again. All this energy has been released because of man's inhumanity to man.
Jaap den Haan, Namen,
absolutely every country that has planes and aid available in the form of food and medicen should make air drops to the people of Burma or Myanmar as it is now called. There are inocent people who are starving and are becoming ill with all sorts of illness .
karen S Bauman, Bluffton, Indiana 46714, United States of America
absolutely every country that has planes and aid available in the form of food and medicine should make air drops to the people of Burma or Myanmar as it is now called. There are inocent people who are starving and are becoming ill with all sorts of illness .
karen S Bauman, Bluffton, Indiana 46714, United States of America