Myanmar Cyclone Toll Could Be Over 50,000

It's difficult to fathom the human calamity when we're so far removed from it, but as time passes the tragedy in Myanmar is reaching epic proportions.

Foreign aid workers in 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 whose scale invites comparison with the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The official death count after Cyclone Nargis is 15,000, and the Thai Foreign Minister says he has been told that 30,000 people are missing. But due to the incompleteness of the information from the stricken Irrawaddy delta, UN and charity workers in the city of Rangoon privately believe that the number will eventually be several times higher.

Andrew Kirkwood, country director of the British charity Save The Children told The Times: “I’d characterise it as unprecedented in the history of Myanmar and on an order of magnitude with the effect of the tsunami on individual countries. It might well be more dead than the tsunami caused in Sri Lanka.”

The death toll in Sri Lanka on Boxing Day 2004 was 31,000, second only to the 131,000 who died on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Eleven countries were affected.

Back then the ruling junta refused foreign aid, but apparently the magnitude of the devastation has them considering it this time. They'd be wise to do so.

Burma's junta refused foreign aid after the 2004 tsunami, in which between 60 and 600 of its citizens are reported to have died, but this time the sheer scale of the slowly emerging disaster seems to have forced it to change its mind. "We will welcome help . . . from other countries because our people are in difficulty," said Nyah Win, the Burmese Foreign Minister, in a rare TV appearance.

Of course, they're still playing politics with people's lives. What a disgrace.

The generals have, however, turned down an offer from the US State Department of $250,000 (£125,000) in help and a disaster assistance team, suggesting that it remains selective about whom it accepts. The refusal prompted a sharp rebuke from Laura Bush, the US first lady, who urged the generals not to hinder the relief effort. "The United States stands prepared to provide an assistance team and much-needed supplies to Burma, as soon as the Burmese Government accepts our offer," she said.

It may be just a matter of time until George W. Bush is blamed and the UN says how stingy Americans are.