SubscribeMore Than 22,000 Dead After Burma Cyclones
From a highly incensed Associated Press:
Myanmar cyclone death toll soars past 22,000: state radio
YANGON, Myanmar - The cyclone death toll soared above 22,000 on Tuesday and more than 41,000 others were missing as foreign countries mobilized to rush in aid after the country’s deadliest storm on record, state radio reported.
Up to 1 million people may be homeless after Cyclone Nargis hit the Southeast Asian nation, also known as Burma, early Saturday. Some villages have been almost totally eradicated and vast rice-growing areas are wiped out, the World Food Program said.
Images from state television showed large trees and electricity poles sprawled across roads and roofless houses ringed by large sheets of water in the Irrawaddy River delta region, which is regarded as Myanmar’s rice bowl.
“From the reports we are getting, entire villages have been flattened and the final death toll may be huge,” Mac Pieczowski, who heads the International Organization for Migration office in Yangon, said in a statement…
Myanmar’s military regime has signaled it will welcome aid supplies for victims of a devastating cyclone, the U.N. said Tuesday, clearing the way for a major relief operation from international organizations.
But U.N. workers were still awaiting their visas to enter the country, said Elisabeth Byrs of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
“The government has shown a certain openness so far,” Byrs said. “We hope that we will get the visas as soon as possible, in the coming hours. I think the authorities have understood the seriousness of the situation and that they will act accordingly.”
The appeal for outside assistance was unusual for Myanmar’s ruling generals, who have long been suspicious of international organizations and closely controlled their activities. Several agencies, including the International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, have limited their presence as a consequence.
Allowing any major influx of foreigners could carry risks for the military, injecting unwanted outside influence and giving the aid givers rather than the junta credit for a recovery.
However, keeping out international aid would focus blame squarely on the military should it fail to restore peoples’ livelihoods.
Some aid agencies reported their assessment teams had reached some areas of the largely isolated region but said getting in supplies and large numbers of aid workers would be difficult.
The cyclone came only a week ahead of a key referendum on a constitution that Myanmar’s military leaders hoped would go smoothly in its favor, despite opposition from the country’s feisty pro-democracy movement. However, the disaster could stir the already tense political situation.
State radio also said that Saturday’s vote would be delayed until May 24 in 40 of 45 townships in the Yangon area and seven in the Irrawaddy delta, which took the brunt of the weekend storm. It indicated that the balloting would proceed in other areas as scheduled…
So now we will have days of people who could not find Myanmar (or even Burma) on a clearly labeled map telling us that this is the fault of global warming, the Bush administration and FEMA.
Of course there are just no other possible explanations.
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7 Responses to “More Than 22,000 Dead After Burma Cyclones”
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May 6th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Y’know, I’m calling BS on these figures, 22k dead and 41k missing. So soon they would know this? And the U (abbrev. for Useless)N and world food bank are jumping into action, you know, doing almost nothing but asking for money as usual, meanwhile figuring their cut of it all, the world food bank likewise. And the blame on global warming is just icing on the cake too.
May 6th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
“Y’know, I’m calling BS on these figures, 22k dead and 41k missing.”
Then you will really appreciate these hysterics down under at the AAP:
May 6th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Sure there is, Al Gore needs to pump his stock.
At landfall All three of these hurricanes, Katrina, Wilma and Nargis were CAT 3s. Two suffered from the ‘evacuation problem’. In Katrina’s case, stupid government problem. In Nargis’ case, dictatorship didn’t warn anybody they were on a flood plain in the path of a land falling hurricane.
In the case of Wilma, we ran and few were killed. Includes me who was about 5 miles from the center at landfall of Wilma. I was in a shelter 30 miles away.
May 6th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
I’ve lived through 5 hurricanes in just 4 years. I moved to the barrier island community of Surf City, Topsail Island, NC on July 5, 1996. One week later we had the eye of hurricane Bertha make landfall just 30 miles south and as many of you probably know, the full force of hurricane winds in this hemisphere are on the NW quadrant of the storm. We were hit hard and couldn’t return to the island for a week afterwards. Sept. 6, came an even larger and stronger storm called Fran who made a direct hit on the island wiping it nearly clean and creating two new ocean inlets.
Then in 1998 we had Bonnie, of which I have hours of video, and in 1999 there were Dennis and Floyd which brought terrible floods killing many people far inland in Princeville, NC. Only 20 minutes south from where I grew up.
I weathered all these storms just off the island in a home on the intracoastal waterway about 1000 yards from the ocean. I lost everything I had during Fran, but I was a carpenter at the time and it was a boom time for years after these events. I felt fortunate to be alive. The scene of devastation cannot be put into words. The old cliche that it looked as though a bomb went off is just not strong enough to describe what I saw. People had very blank looks on their faces, but know one that I know of lost their life. I also remeber vividly just how beautiful the sky always was the next day after the storms passed.
The reason I’m telling this story is because I’ve been there, I’ve seen personally what these storms can do. I feel very fortunate that I live in a state that is well prepared and we get plenty of warning about these storms long before they even get close. But these people in Burma (Myanmar) never had a chance because they’re goverment didn’t feel the need to warn the population. I don’t doubt these casualty numbers at all. I’m sure they will climb. You learn to respect these storms if ever once you’ve seen the power of even a CAT 2.
IMO, the government of Myanmar might as well had chained these people down at the ocean front because not warning them of the coming storm achieved the same result.
That’s just crimminal and evil beyond comprehension.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:50 am
What bothers me most about the global warming angle is that:
A: The ocean path over which this storm traveled is currently cooler than average.
B: The government’s fleet of drifting thermometer buoys designed to take the temperature of the oceans has shown no warming to slight cooling since 2003 when the buoys were deployed.
C. Since 2002 there has been relatively dramatic Global Cooling that can be clearly seen.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
New Orleans: The Model…..
“The people’s plight is not helped by the disposition of their Government. Running the country on a combination of internal repression and xenophobia, the junta seems not to have made up its mind that this is a tragedy that it cannot remedy on its own.
It certainly was not too concerned when the cyclone approached the Burmase coast. A spokesman for the Indian Meteorological Department revealed yesterday that it had given Burma two days’ warning of Cyclone Nargis. “Forty-eight hours before Nargis struck, we indicated its point of crossing \, its severity and all related issues to Burmese agencies,” he said. Weather systems in the Bay of Bengal are tracked by India by satellite.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t.....883123.ece
May 7th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
The “science” is settled, the Goracle claims Cyclone Nargis is the result of global warming. From B&MI;
Al Gore is a despicable sh*tbag!! The body count in Myanmar is still climbing and this rat scrotum uses the disaster to further his own spin doctor agenda so he can sell carbon credits. The man has absolutely no humanity or morals. What a disgusting POS..!!