Myanmar Believes 13,000 Dead, Missing From Cyclone

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Myanmar believes 13,000 dead, missing from cyclone
By Aung Hla Tun
Yahoo News
Mon May 5, 3:51 PM ET

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar’s military junta believes at least 10,000 people died in a cyclone that ripped through the Irrawaddy delta, triggering a massive international aid response for the pariah state in southeast Asia.

“The basic message was that they believe the provisional death toll was about 10,000 with 3,000 missing,” a Yangon-based diplomat told Reuters in Bangkok, summarizing a briefing from Foreign Minister Nyan Win. “It’s a very serious toll.”

The scale of the disaster from Saturday’s devastating cyclone drew a rare acceptance of outside help from the diplomatically isolated generals, who spurned such approaches in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The secretive military, which has ruled the former Burma for 46 years, has moved even further into the shadows in the last six months due to the widespread outrage at its bloody crackdown on protests led by Buddhist monks in September.

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Hopefully this death toll is an overestimate. However I have a bad feeling it will get worse. I have been tracking Tropical Cyclone Nargis. I had a bad feeling about this one. It was a Category 3 when it made landfall. Same as what Hurricane Katrina made landfall as on the Gulf Coast. This is the deadliest tropical cyclone in this century and decade. It is deadlier than Sidr and deadliest since Katrina and Mitch in 1998.

It is going to be a very rough time for the people in Burma, coupled with the military junta. Perhaps this could be their downfall. Most of the death are from wind and storm surge. The area where Burma is, is very vulnerable to storm surge because of all the shallow water. Same goes with Bangladesh. In fact the area is like the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast. A large area of shallow water also coupled with the shape of the land, which is funnel shaped.