NGO ranks ground scene worse than 2004 tsunami
The scene on the ground in Myanmar is far worse than Sri Lanka 48 hours after the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 and the lasting impact is likely to be worse than that disaster's impact on Sumatra.
That is the chilling assessment of World Vision's Australian chief, Reverend Tim Costello, who arrived in Myanmar on Thursday.
'It's awful, in terms of what I saw in Sri Lanka 48 hours after the tsunami. It's greater than that, particularly because it's over such a huge area and this is such a poor country,' he said in a telephone interview.
'It has hit the rice belt and that is just devastating in the long term. The ripple effects of this are just huge.'
Almost a week after Cyclone Nargis struck, 'a life is lost every hour and every hour wasted is bringing us closer to an epidemic of water-borne diseases such as cholera, which could take more lives than the cyclone'.
Mr Costello said work on the ground was being hampered by 'frustrating mixed signals' coming from the government.
Although rice was being supplied to 6,000 people a day in an area, this was coming from local supplies, which would soon be gone.
Meanwhile, planes loaded with relief supplies remained on the ground in Dubai and elsewhere and the experts able to deal with rapidly deteriorating water sanitation were being denied entry.
Mr Costello recalled that Aceh province, in northern Sumatra, was a hive of relief activity in the days soon after the tsunami struck.
But in Myanmar, little is happening.
'Our 600 Burmese staff have been allowed into regions where we haven't in the past been permitted to work, so it's a mixed scorecard.
'We are hoping that once the referendum is over, we will be allowed in,' Mr Costello said.
'At the moment, we are sharing frustrations with most organisations, because we can't get visas for our people.'
While there were World Vision staff near the epicentre of the cyclone, many aid workers were being turned away from villages by the government, which was telling them 'everyone is dead' or 'all the people have left'.
'We still do not have the whole picture, Mr Costello said.
'The 60,000 they are stating as missing and dead aren't those who haven't turned up to register - it's those who haven't been reached or have been washed out to sea.'
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