UN: New cyclone forming in Burma area
The United Nations said today another cyclone was forming near Burma, less than two weeks after it was devastated by a killer storm.
Amanda Pitt, spokeswoman for the UN humanitarian relief programme, could not say where the landfall would be or when it would become a full-fledged cyclone.
She told reporters that another cyclone was likely, saying: “This is terrible.”
She said the information about the possible cyclone came from the Joint Typhoon Warning centre, which is part of the UN’s World Meteorological Centre.
The Joint Typhoon Warning Centre said on its website that there was "potential for the development" of a storm in the Irrawaddy delta.
The May 2-3 cyclone that pulverised Burma’s Irrawaddy delta left more than 60,000 people dead or missing.
The news came hours after the first international aid official allowed into the cyclone-devastated Irrawaddy delta by Burma's military leaders described towns rendered unrecognisable, survivors exposed to pouring rain and local ``humanitarian'' heroes saving lives.
Soldiers have barred foreign aid workers from reaching cyclone survivors in the areas hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis, but gave access to an International Red Cross representative who returned to Rangoon yesterday.
“People who have come here having lost their homes in rural areas have volunteered to work as first aiders. They are humanitarian heroes,” said Bridget Gardner, the agency’s country head.
In contrast, the ruling junta has been blasted by aid agencies for refusing to allow most foreign experts into the delta and not responding adequately to what they say is a spiralling crisis.
Some victims were reportedly getting spoiled or poor-quality food, rather than nutrition-rich biscuits sent by international donors, adding to suspicions that the junta may be misappropriating foreign aid following the May 3 storm that killed more than 34,000 people.
Two million people, mostly poor rice farmers, have been left homeless or are in dire need following the storm, facing disease and starvation.
The military, which has ruled since 1962, has taken control of most supplies sent by other countries, including the US, which made its first aid delivery on Monday and sent in another cargo plane yesterday packed with blankets, water and mosquito nettings. A third shipment was on its way.
Burma’s navy commander in chief, Rear Admiral Soe Thein, told Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of the US Pacific forces, that basic needs of the storm victims were being fulfilled and “skillful humanitarian workers are not necessary”, according to state television.
Getting to the worst-affected areas was getting more and more difficult.
Armed police checkpoints were set up on roads leading to the Irrawaddy delta yesterday, and international aid workers and journalists were sent back by officers who took down their names and passport numbers. Drivers, too, were interrogated.
“No foreigners allowed,” a policeman said yesterday, after waving a car back.
However, Ms Gardner and her assessment team were able to visit five locations in the Irrawaddy delta, one of them with 10,000 people living without shelter as rain tumbled from the sky.
“The town of Labutta is unrecognisable. I have been here before and now with the extent of the damage and the crowds of displaced people, it’s a different place,” she said in a statement by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
In Labutta and elsewhere she said volunteers were giving medical aid to hundreds of people a day even though “they have no homes to go back to when they finish.”
Bottlenecks, logistics problems and government-imposed restrictions were preventing much of the aid from reaching survivors.
Supplies were piling up at Rangoon’s main airport – which does not even have equipment to lift cargo off Boeing 747s. It took 200 Burmese volunteers to unload a plane carrying more than 60 tons of relief supplies, including school tents, said the United Arab Emirates aid group, Dubai Cares.
“We fear a second catastrophe (in Burma) unless we’re able to put in place quickly a maximum of aid and a major logistical effort comparable with the response to the tsunami,” said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs.
The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen nations, generating the largest relief effort ever known. Tens of thousands of aid workers poured into devastated areas, and the world community donated billions in aid.
State television said the death toll from Cyclone Nargis stood at 34,273, with 27,838 missing. The United Nations says the actual death toll could be between 62,000 and 100,000.
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said Washington was pressing the junta and its foreign allies for Burma to allow in not only food and supplies but disaster relief experts.
Some victims and aid workers, meanwhile, said in many cases spoiled or poor-quality food was reaching survivors.
A long-time foreign resident of Rangoon said some government officials complained that high-energy biscuits rushed in on the World Food Programme’s first flights were sent to a military warehouse.
They were exchanged for what the officials described as “tasteless and low-quality” biscuits produced by the Industry Ministry to be handed out to cyclone victims, he said anonymously, because identifying himself could endanger him.
A government spokesman would not comment.
UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said secretary general Ban Ki-moon had expressed concern that aid was being diverted to non-cyclone victims, but so far there was no evidence.
CARE Australia’s country director in Burma, Brian Agland, said members of his local staff brought back some of the rotting rice being distributed in the devastated Irrawaddy delta.
