Earth Equity News-May 6, 2008

Aid Workers Fear Cyclone Deaths Will Top 50,000. By Kenneth Denby, London Times, May 6, 2008. "Foreign aid workers in [Myanmar, formerly known as] Burma have concluded that as many as 50,000 people died in Saturday's cyclone, and two to three million are homeless, in a disaster on a scale comparable with the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The official death count after Cyclone Nargis stood at just under half that by 1300 GMT today, at around 22,500 people dead plus a further 41,000 missing. But due to the incompleteness of the information from the stricken delta of the Irrawaddy river, UN and charity workers in the city of Rangoon privately believe that the number will eventually be double that... Foreign aid agencies have reported scenes of devastation, with corpses still littering the rice fields and desperate survivors without food or clean drinking water. They are either without shelter or crammed into whatever buildings remain standing... Factfile: storm deaths: 1,500 dead in the southern U.S. in Hurricane Katrina in August 2005; 4,400 dead in Bangladesh in Cyclone Sidr last November, the most recent violent storm to hit Southeast Asia; 9,000 dead in Central America in Hurricane Mitch in November 1998. Winds of up to 180mph, but most deaths caused by flooding and mudslides so extensive that the maps of Honduras and Nicaragua had to be redrawn; 10,000 dead in east Indian state of Orissa in cyclone in October 1999. The winds were accompanied by a 26ft storm surge. Many died of starvation and disease as rescuers failed to reach them in time with aid; 50,000 feared dead in Cyclone Nargis in Burma in May 2008; 138,000 dead in Chittagong region of Bangladesh in cyclone in April 1991. The 20-ft storm surge brought massive flooding that left 10 million homeless; 225,000 dead in 11 countries in the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004. 31,229 were confirmed dead in Sri Lanka and 131,028 in Indonesia, mostly in Aceh province on the island of Sumatra. The official death toll in Burma was 61, although witnesses put it closer to 600."