Interesting Things For you Late @ Night 2: Myanmar Raises Cyclone Toll to 78,000

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Friday, May 16, 2008

Myanmar Raises Cyclone Toll to 78,000 - New York Times

BANGKOK — Myanmar’s government almost doubled the official death toll on Friday to 78,000, two weeks after a huge cyclone ravaged much of the Irrawaddy Delta and the main city, Yangon. It also nearly doubled the number of missing to 55,917, and raised the number of injured steeply to 19,359, up from 1,403.

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Survivors of the cyclone Nargis in Thetkala on the outskirts of Yangon on Friday.

The revised toll began to approach an estimate by the United Nations of more than 100,000 dead. On Wednesday the Red Cross said the death toll could be as high as 128,000.
The United Nations estimates that 1.6 million to 2.5 million survivors are in urgent need of food, water, shelter and medicine.
The official death toll has been rising steadily. On Monday, it was 28,458; on Tuesday, 31,938; on Wednesday, 38,491; and on Thursday, 43,318. State radio gave no reason for the sudden spike in the number on Friday.
Relief officials believe that the toll is much higher than the government acknowledges, but they also say their own figures can be only rough estimates, given the scattering of bodies by towering waves, the chaos as people have sought food and shelter and the exclusion of most foreigners from the hardest hit areas. In addition, there is no recent census to rely on for a starting population point.
Major relief agencies have been frustrated by the government’s refusal to let them put in place a large-scale relief operation or to send in their own disaster recovery experts.
The junta’s closed door to most outside help contrasts with China’s acceptance of relief teams from Russia, Taiwan and Japan after the enormous earthquake in Sichuan Province on Monday.
A modest amount of aid from a number of nations and relief groups is reaching Myanmar, but aid workers say it is only a small portion of what is needed to address a major disaster. They say that if emergency supplies do not reach survivors soon, many more could die through starvation and epidemic.
The cyclone, which struck early on May 3, devastated much of the fertile Irrawaddy River delta and ravaged parts of the country’s main city, Yangon. The government said deaths in the city were far lower than in the low-lying countryside where most homes were of thatch and bamboo.
The country’s military junta insists that it can handle relief operations on its own. Its propaganda mouthpiece, The New Light of Myanmar, has printed pages of reports and photographs each day showing military officers busy handing out supplies and comforting victims.