With The Wind and Waves Roaring 'Giant wave dragged everything into the sea'
Pastor Dale Morgan
With The Wind and Waves Roaring 'Giant wave dragged everything into the
sea'*
May 8, 2008
Haunted survivors emerging from the devastation of Burma's ravaged
southwest say entire families were wiped out when Cyclone Nargis cut its
deadly path through the region.
Huddled in the township of Labutta they told tales of survival against
the odds even as children, mothers and fathers were swept away by the
floodwaters that submerged huge swathes of the Irrawaddy delta.
A Burma military official today said an estimated 80,000 people had died
in the remote Labutta district, with dozens of the 63 villages
surrounding Labutta township wiped out.
"The storm came into our village, and with the wind and waves roaring, a
giant wave washed in, dragging everything into the sea," said one man in
his 20s, who had trekked in from Kanyinkone village.
"Houses collapsed, buildings collapsed, and people were swept away. I
only survived by hanging on to a big tree.
"Only about 20 per cent of the people survived in our village. I am the
only one who survived in my family. My wife and my two children died in
the storm."
The Labutta district was hard hit when Nargis and its huge storm surge
slammed ashore on Saturday, devastating the low-lying Irrawaddy delta.
"The waves were so strong, they ripped off all my clothes. I was left
naked hanging in a tree," said one teenage survivor.
Based on stories from people emerging from the countryside, only about
20 per cent of people in the area survived, Labutta residents said.
"No one is left in my immediate family," said one shell-shocked woman
who was unable to stop her tears. "I also lost many brothers and sisters
and their families."
Another woman saw her one-year-old baby die, and was trying to seek
comfort with the hundreds of others who fled when the ramshackle
villages were washed away after the storm hit.
"We sit and talk about our lost ones together and cry, and then we stop
again to think how we can cope with this hardship," she said.
Orphans, widows, grieving parents, monks - their faces blank and staring
- sat on the floor of temporary shelters in the township awaiting
assistance as conditions became increasingly desperate, with no drinking
water, toilets or medicine.
Official state media in tightly-controlled Burma have put the number of
dead and missing at more than 60,000.
If food, water and medicine does not reach Labutta soon, doctors in the
area say the death toll will continue to rise.
"People really need systematic emergency assistance immediately," said a
local doctor.