Myanmar Cyclone Aftermath Update

This is a shot of Cyclone Nargis on Friday before it made landfall in Myanmar, formerly knows as Burma, in the southern part of Asia.   As of noon Thursday the death toll still stands above 20,000.  However there are reports that over tens of thousands of people are still missing and at least 1 million are homeless.  Some emergency officials estimate the death toll could rise to over 100,000 because of the lack of food and drinking water and the danger of disease in the delta region.

Take a look at the image to the right.  The top image is a satellite photo of the delta region of Myanmar on April 15, 2008.  The image below it was assembled from data taken from satellites and a satellite photo to determine where the flooding was still occurring in Myanmar about three days after the cyclone hit late last week.  The images are from NASA.  You can see that there is still quite a bit of water covering much of this part of Myanmar.  Yangon, knows as Rangoon in English, is a city of about 4 million people.  The city is now only flooded but surrounded by water.  For the full story on this image click here. 

The government in Myanmar is run by the military and does not have a good relationship with the United States and many other western countries.  It has been a challenge to get aid into the area but relief agencies continue to do what they can.  There was some talk of doing a food drop but the United States has dismissed this idea unless they have permission from the Myanmar government.  There is some aid making it's way into the country through the United Nations but many countries have had limited access to the victims of this natural disaster. 

A cyclone is the same thing as a hurricane.  There are different names of the storms in different parts of the world.  Nargis was a strong Category Three storm with winds up to 130 MPH and gusts 140 to 150 MPH.  To compare, Katrina made landfall as a Category Three Hurricane and the low-lying land of southern Louisiana is similar to that of coastal Myanmar.  The storm surge devastated villages, towns, and cities that had little warning the storm was approaching.