As the survivors of Cyclone Nargis start to rebuild their shattered lives, aid agencies warn that the worst effects of the disaster are still to come. Andrew Buncombe reports from the Irrawaddy DeltaBy the time the last of the daylight was slipping from the sky, it seemed as though every other home we were passing had been flattened.
For mile after mile through the vast flat expanse of the Irrawaddy Delta, the evidence of the destructive power of Cyclone Nargis lay on either side of the rutted road; uprooted trees, downed pylons, entire villages of flimsy, feeble homes blown flat.
To the south and west of here, a 120mph fury had lifted a wall of water 12ft tall from the Andaman Sea on Friday night and driven it in a deadly surge across much of the delta. The bamboo huts of Burma's coast would have been the first to meet the destructive power of the storm as it made landfall, and they would have offered no meaningful resistance to Nargis.
The road between Rangoon and Bogale, through the delta, marks a journey to the very heart of the destruction caused by the cyclone; damage that has left more than 22,400 dead, 41,000 more missing and perhaps a million people homeless. Ten thousand are believed to have died in Bogale alone. No one yet knows how many more open graves like Bogale are waiting beyond the reach of the outside world.
Indeed, if the definition of homeless includes those people who will have to rebuild their properties – often from scratch – then almost everyone in this swathe of southern Burma would fit the description.
But the journey south and west from the former capital Rangoon towards the fingers of land jutting into the Andaman Sea is also a journey into the mindset of the military junta that has ruled this country for much of the past five decades. It is a mindset – at least evidenced outside of parts of Rangoon – that has left the majority of ordinary citizens to fend for themselves.
Shocked aid workers reporting back to headquarters in Bangkok, capital of neighbouring Thailand, spoke of bodies floating in the flood waters. Reports began to emerge yesterday of hungry crowds storming the few remaining shops in the delta. Paul Risley, a spokesman for the UN World Food Programme in Bangkok, quoting his agency's workers in the area, said: "Fist fights are breaking out."
The great expanse of paddies that once made this part of Burma the most productive rice-growing region in the world is now a bowl of slowly draining salt water, a catastrophe that will continue to be felt after the immediate aftermath clears.
Despite there having been no electricity or fresh water since the category 3 cyclone struck on Saturday morning, there has been little evidence that the authorities are doing much to help.
"Nobody has come. We are going to have to rebuild it ourselves," said Kyi Aye, a rice farmer who was sitting in the flattened ruins of his bamboo and thatch home, south of the town of Maubin. He and his family had been in the house when the storm struck on Friday night and he said they had been "very scared".
They were forced to take shelter in the most solid building they could find – their local Buddhist temple. This appears to have been the most common response, although many of the temples themselves have been damaged. All roads from Rangoon to the disaster area ought yesterday to have been thronged with an epic aid effort.
Instead, the recovery operation was led by crimson-robed monks managing in what, at times, resembled a mass DIY project as people nail back metal roof sheets and start re-erecting bamboo house frames. Closer to the capital, the monks, joined by Catholic nuns and local residents, wielded axes and knives to clear roads of ancient, fallen trees that were once the city's pride.
Richard Horsey, a senior United Nations aid official, speaking in Bangkok, was able to give a snapshot of the aftermath of Nargis, calling it "a major, major disaster". "Basically the entire lower delta region is under water. Teams are talking about bodies floating around in the water."
UN documents obtained by The Associated Press showed growing frustrations at foot-dragging by the junta, which has kept the impoverished nation isolated for five decades to maintain its iron-fisted control.
"Visas are still a problem. It is not clear when it will be sorted out," said the minutes of a meeting yesterday of the UN task force co-ordinating relief for Burma. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, was yesterday due to seek talks with senior figures in the junta to arrange an emergency meeting.
It is possible, of course, that the authorities were simply overwhelmed by the scale of the destruction and the challenge of providing food and emergency supplies for the hundreds of thousands of people in need. But that does not explain why the junta was not able to give people more than a couple of hours' notice that the storm's impact was imminent when the cyclone had been building for days.
One man in a western suburb of Rangoon claimed that the authorities had given them just two hours' warning, the message being delivered by state TV and radio and by officials walking the streets with loudhailers. Nor does it explain why, having asked the international community for help, the authorities may still be hiding the full scale of what happened from the wider world. One Western diplomat, who travelled the same road south through the delta, said he had been turned back by the police when he reached the outskirts of Bogale.
"They are not letting in foreigners," he said. "It seems that the 10,000 dead came from the villages on the coast rather than Bogale itself. There was a 12ft tidal surge. The people just drowned."
Some aid was trickling in last night, but France was already suggesting the UN invoke its "responsibility to protect" and deliver aid directly without waiting for approval from the military in Rangoon. The French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, said the idea was under discussion at the UN in New York.
"We are seeing at the United Nations if we can't implement the responsibility to protect given that food, boats and relief teams are there, and obtain a United Nations resolution which authorises the delivery [of aid] and imposes this on the Burmese government," he said. The UN recognised three years ago the concept of its "responsibility to protect" civilians when their governments could not or would not do it, even if this meant intervention that violated national sovereignty.
Thailand, China, India and Indonesia were flying in relief supplies and US President George Bush and the Prime Minister of Australia appealed to the junta to accept their assistance.
Even relief workers of the UN, which has a presence in the diplomatically isolated south-east Asian country, were still waiting for visas five days after the cyclone struck. Whatever may have been placed off limits, and whatever the restrictions on the flow of aid, the destruction was clear to see. In the town of Kyaiklat, home to a reported 50,000 people, it seemed every home had been damaged to varying degrees.
Huge trees had crushed some houses. Others appear to have fallen in on themselves because of the force of the storm. Miraculously, people said they knew of no one who had been killed.
"We hid in the ground floor of this concrete house. Others ran to the monastery," said Ko Win Min, a shopowner, "and our neighbour's house has been destroyed."
In the absence of mains electricity, as night fell across the delta last night, it rapidly turned pitch black. In the city of Pyapon, famous for its rice production, there were just a handful of battery-operated lights, and the flicker of candles. Yet the streets were packed, people walking through their battered city, talking, gossiping, and swapping news. They loomed out of the darkness.
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