Haunted survivors emerging from the devastation of Myanmar's storm-tossed southwest say entire families were wiped out when Cyclone Nargis cut its deadly path through the region.
Huddled in the township of Labutta, they told tales of survival against the odds even as children, mothers and fathers were swept away by the floodwaters that submerged huge swathes of the Irrawaddy delta.
“The storm came into our village, and a giant wave washed in, dragging everything into the sea,” said one man in his 20s, who had trekked in from Kanyinkone village.
PHOTO: AFP
“Houses collapsed, buildings collapsed, and people were swept away. I only survived by hanging on to a big tree,” he said.
“Only about 20 percent of the people survived in our village. I am the only one who survived in my family. My wife and my two children died in the storm,” he said.
Labutta town is surrounded by 63 small villages dependent on fishing and salt mining in the low-lying Arrawaddy (Irrawaddy) delta, one of the areas worst hit when the cyclone brought tidal waves washing over their homes.
“The waves were so strong, they ripped off all my clothes. I was left naked hanging in a tree,” one teenage survivor said.
Based on stories emerging from the countryside, only about 20 percent of people in the area survived, Labutta residents said.
Tin Win, leader of a ward within the town, estimated that the death toll in those villages alone was 80,000.
“No one is left in my immediate family,” said one shell-shocked woman who was unable to stop her tears. “I also lost many brothers and sisters and their families.”
Another woman saw her one-year-old baby die, and was trying to seek comfort with the hundreds of others who fled when their ramshackle villages were washed away after the storm hit at the weekend.
“We sit and talk about our lost ones together and cry, and then we stop again to think how we can cope with this hardship,” she said.
Orphans, widows, grieving parents, monks — their faces blank and staring — sat on the floor of temporary shelters in Labutta awaiting assistance as conditions became increasingly desperate, with no drinking water, toilets or medicine.
Official state media have put the number of dead and missing at more than 60,000.
If food, water and medicine does not reach Labutta soon, doctors and aid agencies say the death toll will carry on growing.
“People here need emergency assistance for basic needs like water, food, medicine and a sanitation system immediately,” a local doctor said.
“Those who are still in the remote villages also need emergency assistance. Drinking water wells in the villages are spoiled. The corpses of people and animals are still unburied. It’s going to be a huge problem,” he said.
Piles of rotting corpses are stacking up in remote villages in the delta, with residents saying they don’t have enough fuel to cremate them.
The region’s rice paddies and roads are covered with the corpses of people as well as buffaloes, pigs and chickens.
What scarce fuel remains is being used to ferry water and other supplies by boat from Labutta.
“We need diesel to drive motor boats for fetching water from town,” said Myint Oo, a boat owner in Kanynkone.
“We collect many corpses, but we’re just leaving them on the ground because we don’t have enough gasoline to burn them all,” he said.
“There are still many dead bodies of people and animals along the river,” he said.
“It’s going to be a big problem for people downstream who drink water from the river,” he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not