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'I knew I'd lost my family'
08/05/2008 19:04 - (SA)
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| A girl walks next to a house damaged by Cyclone Nargis on the outskirt of Yangon. (AP) |
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Bogalay - When the massive storm
surge churned up by Cyclone Nargis struck his village,
fisherman Zaw Win clung to a tree for three hours.
The strength in his arms saved his life. He could only
watch helplessly as his wife, 10-year-old son and four-year-old
daughter were dragged to their deaths by the head-high waves.
"I just held on and cried. I knew I'd lost my family," the
32-year-old told Reuters in Bogalay, one of the towns in
Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta, worst-hit by Nargis' 190km/h winds and the wall of water they generated.
Of his coastal village of 2 000 people, just 40 survived,
he said.
To get to Bogalay, 90km southwest of the former capital
Yangon, he had to wade through floating corpses before finding
a boat to carry him for two hours through devastated swampland
- all that remains of the what was once the "Rice Bowl of
Asia".
Desperate for help, all he found were whole streets
flattened and virtually nothing to eat or drink.
"We need food, water, clothes and shelter," he said. "We'll
starve to death if nothing is sent to us."
His is just one of the many harrowing tales told by
survivors paddling their way out of the delta in splintered
wooden boats.
'It's disastrous, terrible'
Almost no aid has reached the town of 50 000 where rice
mills have been ripped apart and fishing boats washed away.
Myanmar's military government says at least 10 000 people died in Bogalay alone.
Twenty soldiers guarded meagre supplies of rice and instant
noodles in a brick building commandeered from a women and
children's association. Residents said they had received some
small handouts.
On the grounds of a school, a dozen empty army trucks sat
idle. One small truck laden with rice sacks headed along the
narrow, potholed stone track to Bodalay on Thursday morning,
escorted by a jeep filled with military officers.
Some of the first relief workers to reach Bogalay were
astounded at the damage.
"It's disastrous, terrible," said Saw Simon Tha, a
neurosurgeon who runs a charity-funded mobile health clinic.
Roofs were blown off almost all the houses, holes blasted
in wooden walls and the streets littered with the remains of
matted bamboo and thatched huts.
The wooden stands alongside the town's soccer pitch have
backflipped onto the road, where electricity pilons lie mangled
amidst fallen trees.
Amid the destruction, Saw Simon Tha's medical team came
across Than Win, 41 years old and eight months pregnant.
She survived by climbing a tree as the water rose around
her house, drowning seven of her 10 children.
No food, water
That evening, in a makeshift clinic set up amid the rubble,
she gave birth to her 11th child, a boy she called Chit Oo Mg.
It means "first love".
"After what happened, this is a beautiful present," she
said, clutching her newborn son in her arms.
Bogalay's Buddhist temple and primary school are teeming
with the homeless from nearby villages.
But many others have chosen to stay near their collapsed
huts, building tents from snapped branches and reeds and drying
what is left of their rice stocks on blue mesh sacking laid out
on the road.
"So many people are coming here but there's no food or
water," said one Western aid worker, who asked not to be
identified. "There's a big risk of disease - dysentery,
malaria and severe malnutrition."
Some of the refugees lie on the bank of a creek that
empties into a coconut tree-lined river as even more boats
glide silently into the town during the night.
Fisherman Kyaw Way, managed to lift his wife, 10-year-old
son and seven-year-old daughter into a tamarind tree. His other
children, a girl of eight and boy of six, are missing.
"The house was blown over and then the waves came, getting
higher and higher," said Way, dressed in a traditional blue
longyi, or sarong, and T-shirt.
"We were in the tree from eight (in the morning) to about
midnight," he said.
One of the few structures in the town to survive the
onslaught was a newly built concrete bridge. People say it
saved 2 000 lives.
U Zaw Mia, 68, clung on to the wooden column in the centre
of his house until his sons dragged him to the relative safety
of the bridge. He almost wished they hadn't.
"I was shouting at them that I wanted to die in my house,"
he said.
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