Big casualties feared as cyclone hammers Myanmar
Updated: 2008-05-04 11:30
BANGKOK - A large tropical cyclone that slammed into Yangon toppled buildings and felled trees, a Thailand-based aid agency said on Sunday, raising fears of major casualties in Myanmar's main city.
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Damage from Cyclone Nargis is seen in central Yangon on May 2, 2008. A tropical cyclone slammed into Myanmar's main city on Saturday, ripping off roofs, felling trees and power lines and forcing authorities to close the airport. [Agencies] |
The Internet and land, mobile and satellite phone connections have been down since Cyclone Nargis's 190 km (120 mile) per hour winds hit on Saturday, making it impossible to confirm the extent of the damage in the sprawling river delta city of 5 million.
However, Kyaw Lin Oo of Burma Democratic Concern, said he had spoken to a contact in Yangon on Saturday evening after the worst of the storm passed at around 7 pm (8:30 am EST).
"The whole city is in a very bad condition. All the trees have been uprooted and some buildings have fallen down near Yangon University," he told Reuters in the Thai capital.
The university lies in the heart of the former Burmese capital, and is one of its poshest districts.
On Saturday, a United Nations official in Bangkok said UN staff had managed to contact a colleague in Yangon as the eye of the storm passed overhead in the afternoon.
"A lot of roofs from well-constructed buildings have been blown off. That would lead you to believe that less well-constructed buildings will have taken a really big whack," Tony Craig, regional emergency coordinator for the World Food Programme (WFP), told Reuters.
The Federation of Trade Unions, Burma, a Thailand-based labor rights group, said the ruling military junta had declared states of emergency in five affected provinces, most of them in the low-lying floodplains of the Irrawaddy delta.
State-run MRTV and Yangon City Radio were off the air, making it impossible to confirm the report.
A spokesman for Britain's Department for International Development (DFID), which has a staff of 10 in Myanmar, said it had not been able to establish the extent of damage because of poor communications, but that its people were safe.
POWER OUT
The electricity supply in Yangon -- hit-and-miss at the best of times in one of Asia's poorest countries -- failed after Nargis drew near on Friday evening.
Meteorological officials warned of a possible storm surge of up to 12 feet in coastal areas, suggesting tens of thousands of people could be at risk.
The streets of Yangon were virtually deserted, and buses and trains were not operating due to extensive flooding, a Reuters reporter in the city said before his communications were cut off.
A spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said officials from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Yangon would meet with the Myanmar Red Crescent on Sunday to assess the damage.
An official at Yangon International Airport said all incoming flights had been diverted to the second city of Mandalay, in the middle of the southeast Asian nation, and all departures from Yangon had been cancelled.
An official at Thai Airways in Bangkok said the airline planned to resume flights on Sunday, but was unable to give details of conditions on the ground in Myanmar.
Weather forecasters said Nargis was likely to keep moving northeast on Sunday and into northern Thailand, where a storm warning has already been issued.
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