WASHINGTON - The top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar says 100,000 may have died in the cyclone and that 95 percent of buildings in the affected area are demolished.
Shari Villarosa heads the U.S. embassy in the capital Rangoon. She says food and water are running short in the Myanmar delta area inundated by the storm. She called the situation in that area "increasingly horrendous."
Villaros told reporters Wednesday: "There is a very real risk of disease outbreaks as long as this continues."
She said that almost all the deaths are in the delta area. In the capital, some 600-700 people may have died. Villarosa also said she does not think the military rulers in Myanmar are blocking U.S. assistance because of the Bush administration's past strong criticism of the junta.
U2Fanatic4ever said:let met tell you I am so outraged at the situation there I am at a complete loss for words right now.. What is this f'd up gov't doing? They are killing their own people... The numbers could reach as much as 500,000 people dead here soon..
They just seized a HUGE AMOUNT of supplies from the UN...
here's the article:
UN halts aid to Myanmar after junta seizes supplies 14 minutes ago
YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar's junta seized U.N. aid shipments Friday meant for a multitude of hungry and homeless survivors of last week's devastating cyclone, forcing the world body to suspend further help.
The aid included 38 tons of high-energy biscuits and arrived in Myanmar on Friday on two flights from Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.
"All of the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated," U.N. World Food Program spokesman Risley said.
"For the time being, we have no choice but to end further efforts to bring critical needed food aid into Myanmar at this time," he said.
At least 62,000 people are dead or missing in Myanmar, entire villages are submerged in the Irrawaddy delta and aid groups warned that the area is on the verge of a medical disaster.
The U.N. has grown increasingly critical of Myanmar's military rulers' refusal to let foreign aid workers into the country while the junta appeared overwhelmed and more than 1 million homeless people waited for food, medicine and shelter.
"The frustration caused by what appears to be a paperwork delay is unprecedented in modern humanitarian relief efforts," Risley said. "It's astonishing."
The junta said in a statement Friday it was grateful to the international community for its assistance — which has included 11 chartered planes loaded with aid supplies — but the best way to help was just to send in material rather than personnel.
Nearly a week after the storm, survivors are now having to contend with rotting corpses of people and animals as they wait for food, clean water and medicine.
"Many are not buried and lie in the water. They have started rotting and the stench is beyond words," Anders Ladekarl, head of the Danish Red Cross.
About 20,000 body bags were being sent so volunteers from the Myanmar chapter of the Red Cross can start collecting bodies, he said.
The U.N. was putting together an urgent appeal to fund aid efforts over the next six months. Spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs told reporters that the exact amount of the appeal would be specified later Friday.
The International Organization for Migration says it is asking for $8 million as part of the appeal. The U.N. refugee agency says it needs $6 million to fund the immediate shelter and household needs of 250,000 people.
Vincent Vega said:I guess the plan rather is to seize the aid and then give them to the public themselves, thus carrying the picture that they are helping their own people so generously. This will ensure much more voters than if the UN and other nations came to provide the public with those necessities.
It would also be a more effective strategy than to try to kill your voters off.
Vincent Vega said:It's a dictatorship. They don't care one iota about their own people. They haven't since they've taken over the country.
Butterscotch said:You know how when somebody doesn't feed their kid or take care of them the welfare comes and takes them away? Can we take these people away from their gov't?
Butterscotch said:You know how when somebody doesn't feed their kid or take care of them the welfare comes and takes them away? Can we take these people away from their gov't?
butter7 said:
Tell me, when can I see CNN report for "the mass destruction weapon found in Burma"? Don't have to wait too long, I guess.
Butterscotch said:They also remind me of my aunt whose house is so messy she'd rather leave her stuff broken than to have anyone come in to fix it and see what all is wrong inside. Guess they have a lot to hide too!
Whatever happened to that "Walk On" lady can't she help somehow?
Aung San Suu Kyi. She's currently on house arrest.Butterscotch said:
Whatever happened to that "Walk On" lady can't she help somehow?
butter7 said:It's amazing that some western people can be so easily fooled. And they have already forgot the pain even their Iraq wounds are still bleeding.
Tell me, when can I see CNN report for "the mass destruction weapon found in Burma"? Don't have to wait too long, I guess.
vaz02 said:Maybe the west should stop interfering imo. If they need our help thats fine but let them ask for it.
If anyone needed liberation its the west. We dont live in a free and fair society and when it comes to a vote the options are few on the ground.
melon said:
So what's your opinion on Darfur then?
The Dangers of the Deltas
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
New York Times, May 11
Deltas are disaster zones in waiting. From the Mekong to the Mississippi, the rich soils and strategic positions of river mouths have long lured farmers, fishers and traders. But the same geography also guarantees they will be periodically inundated.
A case in point was Cyclone Nargis last weekend. As it roared over the sprawling, crowded delta of the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar, the sea surged up to seven miles inland like a slow-motion tsunami, as up to two feet of rain fell. Tens of thousands of people died. Still, many experts say it is not nature that largely determines the amount of death and destruction in such circumstances, but investment, governance and policy (or the lack of it). Governments that do not prepare adequately—either through political inertia and underinvestment as in New Orleans, or willful disregard, as critics of the Myanmar junta charge—will continue to see tragic losses.
There is a long list of reasons for countries with low-lying population centers, particularly around rivers, to do more to gird for the worst. Deltas are evanescent landscapes, formed and occasionally violently rearranged by water. They are implicitly lowlands, built of sediment settling where rivers meet the sea. Most are sinking naturally, as recently deposited silt compresses over time. In many cases, the subsidence is accelerated by human activities, including the extraction of groundwater and construction of upriver dams, levees and channels, which cut off the renewing flow of silt. In addition, destruction of coastal vegetation leaves exposed soil open to erosion.
Vulnerability will keep rising as populations in poor countries crest in the next few decades, with much of the increase crowding into coastal cities. Simultaneously, such regions face a faster retreat of coastlines from the rise in sea levels, as climate and oceans warm under the influence of accumulating greenhouse gases, scientists warn. But human vulnerability can be reduced, as shown in Bangladesh. Though hammered regularly by cyclone-driven floods, it has seen declining death counts since it began investing in warning systems, shelters, coastal housing standards and evacuation plans. Cyclones in its deltas killed something like half a million people in 1970, and 140,000 in 1991. Last November, aid organizations estimate, the toll from Cyclone Sidr was about 4000; in that case, more than two million people had taken shelter when the storm struck.
Cyclone Nargis and its aftermath, on the other hand, provide a vivid study in how poverty and insufficient government investment can turn a natural disaster into an outsize human tragedy, said Debarati Guha-Sapir, the director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center for Research on Disaster Epidemiology, in Brussels. “The villages are in such levels of desperation—housing quality, nutritional status, roads, bridges, dams—that losses were more determined by their condition rather than the force of the cyclone,” she said.