Nargis Cyclone

Cyclone Nargis was a strong ( Tropical Cyclone ) the worst natural disaster ever in Burma history.
It was happen on 02/05/2008, at least 138,000 people died. The Laputta township alone, 80,000 dead but the regime government under-reported to hide the lack of their responsibility. The regime government fail to give warning even they knew before storm is comming. Crops were destoryed by storm and all farms are flooded by see water. Fishing industry was destoryed. Areas were left without clean water, electric and all food were also demaged. The UN suggest that about 200,000 died.
Damage was estimated at over $10 billion (USD), which made it the most damaging cyclone ever recorded in this basin.
Burma's military junta has declared state of emergency but initially resisted international and local aid, but accepted aid later. Some people died for the reason of delay aid and helps.

Unnecessary dead increased because of junta irresponsiblity. The Junta knew how storm is strong and all the government flights move from yangon where part of storm to another cities to avoid demage. But the officials didn't try to manage at central area of cyclone.
The people were totally unaware although they knew the cyclone was coming but only because the wind was very strong.
The information appeared in Burma's state-run newspapers, on radio and on television 48 hours before the cyclone but it didn't impact on local people.

The people in affected areas are normally very poor, they can't have any newspaper and television but a few people have radio.
The junta didn't try to organize by local authorities and no any official managements  such as  to move people out of low-lying areas, even though information was available about the expected time and location of landfall. The worst thing for local people is they didn't know how cyclone was strong and lack of knowledge how to prepare before hit.

 A week later cyclone, constitutional referendum  was held on 10/05/2008 although military junta  totally fail to relief and resettlement.
They didn't care whoever suffer pain or lost lives, they ordered the survivors in the area of cyclone to vote for constitutional referendum.



Kyaw Min
28/07/2008