I blogged about the deadly Myanmar cyclone earlier this week: Myanmar cyclone death toll tops 10,000. My wife urged me to update everyone on the issue, because we really have no clue about this level of destruction and death.
As you probably have already inferred from the title of this blog, top diplomats now think the death toll will reach 100,000 people; largely because of a lack of safe drinking water. Drinking water! Something we take for granted. To put this in perspective, it would take thirty-three September 11th attacks to approximately equal this kind of death toll. Thirty-three! The Jerusalem Post reports:
Only a handful of UN aid workers had been let into the impoverished Southeast Asian country, which the government has kept isolated for five decades to maintain its iron-fisted control. The US and other countries rushed supplies to the region, but most of it was being held outside Myanmar while awaiting the junta’s permission to deliver it.
Entire villages in the Irrawaddy delta were still submerged from Saturday’s 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.
A spokesman for the UN Children’s Fund said its staff in Myanmar reported seeing many people huddled in rude shelters and children who had lost their parents.
“There’s widespread devastation. Buildings and health centers are flattened and bloated dead animals are floating around, which is an alarm for spreading disease. These are massive and horrific scenes,” Patrick McCormick said at UNICEF offices in New York.
Myanmar’s state media said Cyclone Nargis killed at least 22,980 people and left 42,119 missing.
American diplomat Shari Villarosa, who heads the US Embassy in Yangon, said the number of dead could eventually exceed 100,000 because safe food and water were scarce and unsanitary conditions widespread.
The situation is “increasingly horrendous,” she said in a telephone call to reporters. “There is a very real risk of disease outbreaks.”
A few shops reopened in the Irrawaddy delta, but they were quickly overwhelmed by desperate people, said Paul Risley, a spokesman for the UN World Food Program in Bangkok, Thailand, quoting his agency’s workers in the area.
“Fistfights are breaking out,” he said.
A Yangon resident who returned to the city from the delta area said people were drinking coconut water because there was no safe drinking water. He said many people were on boats using blankets as sails.
In my previous post, Myanmar cyclone death toll tops 10,000, I posted a letter from WorldVision with links so that you can help out and give directly to this cause if you feel led to do so. Continue to keep the people of Myanmar in your prayers.
Related posts:
