Cyclone Survivors Cling To Life

The Associated Press

Published: May 8, 2008

LABUTTA, MYANMAR - Some survivors arrived half-naked, others wore clothes that they had scavenged from the dead.

Myanmar's rice-trading town of Labutta - the only spit of high ground in a vast watery landscape - has become a beacon of hope for tens of thousands who lived through the cyclone's fury, most losing homes and family members.

The survivors made the journey in rickety wooden boats with makeshift sails fashioned from blankets, dodging the bloated corpses of buffaloes and dead neighbors floating in the murky waters.

It was a journey from horror to misery for most, who described desperate hours clinging to trees and debris, followed by days of waiting for aid to arrive.

Footage provided a first glimpse of Myanmar's worst-hit Irrawaddy delta, which has been cut off from the rest of the world since Cyclone Nargis struck Saturday, unleashing 12-foot-high storm surges that flooded the low-lying area of rice paddies and bamboo homes.

"I was hanging from an 18-foot-tall coconut tree for a long time until the weather subsided. I don't know what happened to my wife and young children," said Phan Maung, 55, sobbing as he spoke.

Many survivors were shaking and had trouble telling their tales. Some were angry, others hysterical. Only a few were willing to give their names, fearful of retribution by a government already embarrassed by its failure to bring prompt relief.

"I am the only survivor of a family of 11. The entire village was wiped out," said a man from the village of Yay Way.

Nearby, a woman in her 50s stared ahead in shock as she spoke. "The wind came first and the waves started to roll over us, so that we had to crawl over the thatch walls to get to the upper floor of the house. I saw people drowning and dead bodies floating," she said.

More than 60,000 people were killed or are missing in the densely-populated delta, which sits just above sea level. As many as 100,000 are feared dead.

The survivors in Labutta indicated that about two-thirds of the people in their villages had perished.

"About 1,000 people live in my village, only about 300 people survived. All the houses are gone," said a resident of Kwa Kwa Lay. A village headman said only about 100 of 500 people had survived in his submerged town.

Food, clean water and medical supplies were in short supply in Labutta, where some survivors resorted to drinking coconut milk.

Those who made it arrived in boats filled to overflowing with survivors from the 51 surrounding towns and villages, most now under water. But each day there were fewer boats, partly because fuel supplies were disappearing.

They plied through stinking waters, past bodies tangled up in mangrove trees and flattened thatch-roofed houses.

Labutta was battered by the storm. Its communications tower was toppled, the spires on Buddhist pagodas were broken, windows were shattered. Debris was piled on the streets and roofs were torn off.

Only a handful of U.N. 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 United States and other countries rushed supplies to the region, but most of them were being held outside Myanmar while awaiting the junta's permission to deliver them.

American diplomat Shari Villarosa, who heads the U.S. Embassy in Yangon, said the number of dead could eventually exceed 100,000 because unsanitary conditions are widespread.

The situation is "increasingly horrendous," she said. "There is a very real risk of disease outbreaks."