Myanmar cyclone death toll surges to almost 78,000; another 56,000 missing

YANGON, Myanmar — The official death toll from Myanmar’s cyclone has nearly doubled to almost 78,000 and another 56,000 people remain missing two weeks after the devastating storm, state television reported Friday.

The report said the government has counted 77,738 people dead, up from 43,318 a day earlier. The number of missing doubled to 55,917, after being reported as 27,838 for most of the past week.

The report also updated the number of injured to nearly 20,000.

The new cyclone death toll is substantially higher than that suffered by all but one country from the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Indonesia had more than 130,000 dead and 37,000 missing from that disaster.

The Red Cross said Wednesday it believed the total cyclone death toll may be as high as 127,990. The United Nations has said more than 100,000 may have died in Myanmar, the Southeast Asian country also known as Burma.

The state TV announcement implied that the latest casualty toll may be close to the final figure.

“The national disaster management committee carried out search and rescue and relief work and collection of data, promptly, immediately and extensively after the cyclone,” it said.

“However, due to the cyclone aftermath and inclement weather, the figure of dead, missing and injured was finalized on May 15.”

The announcement said there were 159 civil servants among the dead and 58 among the missing.

The UN and the Red Cross say 1.6 million to 2.5 million people are in urgent need of food, water and shelter.

The UN Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, said Friday radio broadcasts are trying to help lost children find their families.

“At the moment, it is difficult to know how many children have been separated or unaccompanied. We still have no indication of how many orphans there may be,” said Shantha Bloemen, a UNICEF spokeswoman.

Ramesh Shrestha, a Canadian who is the representative for UNICEF Myanmar, said hundreds of lost children have been found in the Irrawaddy delta alone — an area the size of Austria.

“It’s going to be a difficult task” finding their relatives, Shrestha said in a telephone interview from Yangon. Entire neighbourhoods have been destroyed and bridges damaged when the powerful storm hit the low-lying region May 2-3.

The children are brought to shelters in Yangon where they can play with other children and be cared for while social workers attempt to trace their families.

“We’re trying to get as much detail as the child can tell the social worker — their name, their place of origin, their mother’s name, father’s name,” Shrestha said.

“But the information we have is still very limited and we will soon be doing some kind of photo ID for each of those children to make sure that we will be able to locate their closest relatives.”

UNICEF teams report that in areas they have visited some 40 per cent of those severely affected are children. If this proportion holds true across the disaster area, as many as one million children may need of urgent assistance, they say.

Since Tuesday, UNICEF has sent 44 truckloads of relief goods including medical supplies, water-purification chemicals, tarpaulins, jerry cans for water and kitchen supplies to devastated areas, Shrestha said.

Relief flights into the country are becoming more systematic, with landing permits being issued on the day UNICEF applies for clearance, Shrestha said. One UNICEF flight arrived Thursday, another Friday and two more are due in the next few days.

In the absence of an organized relief effort by the government, ordinary people are stepping in, with shopkeepers handing out free rice porridge and medical students caring for the sick.

Daw Mya Win, a 49-year-old grocer in a Yangon suburb, cooks rice porridge every day to feed anyone who comes. She also sends pots of it to some of the thousands of homeless sheltering in Buddhist monasteries.

College students are going door-to-door, handing out a few pennies to families for rice.

“Whenever we distribute rice and clothing, I can see the faces of the cyclone victims light up. It is very rewarding to see them smile,” said Nyi Nyi, 21.

The United Nations said Friday that severe restrictions imposed by Myanmar’s military junta have left aid agencies largely in the dark about the extent of survivors’ suffering, two weeks after the deadly storm.

John Holmes, UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, will go to Myanmar on Sunday to try to convince junta leaders to grant more access for UN relief workers and massively scale up aid efforts, said Amanda Pitt, a UN spokeswoman in Bangkok, Thailand.