Cyclone survivors wait in vain

Deep in Myanmar: rotting food, filthy water, no medicine

BOGALE, MYANMAR -- Ma Gan survived Tropical Cyclone Nargis. The storm tore the roof off the tiny brick house where the 22-year-old woman and her extended family live, 60 miles southwest of Yangon, but didn't carry her away. Then, two days later, she gave birth.

Now the baby girl is growing weaker by the day. Ma Gan is not producing breast milk, and almost a week after the storm blasted through, there is virtually no clean water in Bogale or the rest of the disaster zone. There is no medical care and precious little food. A grandmother has taken charge of the infant and is trying to keep her alive by feeding her drops of water from a polluted canal.

"We have nothing. How do we go on?" lamented the family's patriarch, U Myint.

A drive down the road to Bogale on Thursday revealed a swath of destruction -- a succession of flooded fields, fallen trees, brick houses turned to rubble, bamboo huts folded flat like cardboard -- and thousands of survivors, who were camping here in the Irrawaddy delta wherever they could, desperate for help and in most cases getting none.

Bogale lies near the midpoint of the storm's path across the delta, one of the world's most fertile rice-producing areas. The town endured winds topping 120 mph and a storm surge that dumped five to six feet of seawater on the town and rice fields. The death toll in the area is unclear, but Myanmar government sources have said 10,000 may have lost their lives in and around Bogale.

All told, the storm killed at least 22,000 people and left 40,000 missing, the Myanmar government has said; U.S. diplomats have suggested that the death toll could reach 100,000. About 1.5 million survivors are in urgent need of aid, the United Nations said Thursday, as concern turned to a potential second wave of deaths caused by infectious diseases and malnutrition.

On Thursday, Myanmar soldiers and police officers were operating many checkpoints in Bogale. During a visit to the area, a few Myanmar aid groups were seen. One helicopter was spotted delivering supplies.

Empty eyes, empty stomachs

Ma Gan's house, not much bigger than an SUV, is about a mile outside Bogale. Family members and 20-plus friends and relatives were gathered on the family's small, wrecked plot of land. They had erected corrugated metal sheds to complement the house, which was cut in half by the storm. Some were seeking relief from the vicious heat and humidity beneath a lean-to.

The survivors seemed to wear the same look of exhausted acceptance, a traumatized stare, eyes glazed and blank. And their stomachs were empty.

The baby was born in a small shack made of wood and corrugated iron roofing, about the size of a small kitchen, too low to allow people to stand. Ma Gan's mother and other women in the extended family helped with the delivery and were taking care of the infant as best they could. Ma Gan, traumatized, was not joining in.

U Myint went into Bogale to try to get some rice or water, but supplies in the ravaged town were limited. "They sent us away," he recounted. "We have no food, no water. The paddy is no good."

He was referring to rice from a recent harvest. Now rotten, it would normally be fed only to animals, but it has become their staple, their only food. The rice provides no nutrients and can roil the stomach, but they have no choice.

In Bogale were more scenes of destruction, and of waiting. Hundreds of children sat quietly in a set of concrete school buildings that now serve as orphanages and shelters for the many thousands of people who lost their homes.

Farther down the road was a similarly demolished community. It included one of the many monasteries that, though devastated, had taken in the homeless and dispossessed. There were 600 people there, in a temple that housed only 28 monks.