Burma, May 8: Some survivors arrived half-naked, others wore clothes they scavenged from the dead. Burma’s rice-trading town of Labutta, the only spit of high ground in a vast watery landscape, has become a beacon of hope for tens of thousands who lived through the cyclone’s fury, most losing homes and family members.
The survivors made the journey in rickety wooden boats with makeshift sails fashioned out of blankets, dodging the bloated corpses of buffaloes and dead neighbours floating in the murky waters. It was a journey from horror to misery for most, who described desperate hours clinging to trees and debris, followed by days of waiting for aid to arrive, in video shot by a Burma journalist.
The footage provided a first glimpse of Burma’s worst-hit Irrawaddy delta, which has been cut off from the rest of the world since Cyclone Nargis struck on Saturday, unleashing 12-foot-high storm surges that flooded the low-lying area of rice paddies and bamboo homes. "I was hanging from an 18-foot-tall coconut tree for a long time until the weather subsided. I don’t know what happened to my wife and young children," said Phan Maung, 55, sobbing. (AP)
