Burma Cyclone Relief

Tamas Wells, a TEAR Australia fieldworker with World Concern Burma (Myanmar), and his wife Bronwyn are living in Yangon. They reflect on how they survived the onslaught of Cyclone Nargis:

"We were told on Friday that the cyclone in the bay of Bengal was moving toward Myanmar, but had been downgraded from a cyclone to a category 1 storm, which would break up after it came over the land. The storm was expected to arrive at about 4 or 5 pm but nothing happened, so we went to bed on Friday night thinking the storm had blown itself out.

We woke up at about midnight with the sound of violent winds outside. Not consistently strong winds, but sudden rushes that sucked the windows open (fortunately none were smashed) and in the end we had to tie them closed.

Later in the morning the rain started and the roof began leaking. In the end we had every possible container (including cups and a muffin tin) collecting water. Rain was hitting against the windows so hard that it was forcing itself through the cracks between the window and the window pane. We tried to block it off with towels but eventually gave up.

At one point I started to think that the windows might break and we might have to retreat to the bathroom and see out the storm.

Eventually, from 8 am onwards, the storm began to subside and we had some sleep. When we woke up we could see out the windows and were a little disorientated as most of the trees we could see were knocked over. As we looked closer we also saw that many of the houses and flats around us had partially or completely lost their roofs.

As the rain subsided we ventured out to look around. Most of the trees in our street and the surrounding streets had fallen - including enormous ones on a main road that had been uprooted and then thrown across the roads. Most of the roads were completely impassable and groups of people walked around looking at the damage.

The old men said they had never seen anything like it and the children played in puddles outside. Some of the more ramshackle houses had been abandoned but fortunately no one in our immediate community had been injured and most of their houses were repairable.

My immediate thought was how much natural disasters disproportionately affect the poor. Our wealthy friends who live in well-constructed blocks of flats had some water damage - like our house - but nothing destroyed. However, the neighbour who lived in a wooden house (which to be honest was leaning a little askew before the storm) now has to abandon his house.

When the mains water is cut off, the wealthy - like us - have a well at the front of their house and access to a generator which can pump the water into the tanks. The poor queue up outside the local tea shop with buckets.

The wealthy - like us - have stocks of rice and cans of tuna in the cupboards for the days after the crisis. The poor walk down to the market each day, and if it is closed they don't eat.

All of these thoughts are based on our experience in Rangoon in the last few days. I can't begin to imagine what it was like in the delta region in pitch black with wind and water, trying to save your house and then running in desperation to the nearest monastery. Sitting outside the destroyed medical clinic on the high ground near your village and watching a thousand bodies become visible as the water recedes.

All I know of this so far is satellite imagery of changes in water levels and excel spreadsheets with numbers of dead and missing in various regions. Today we drew a map on a whiteboard at the office and my colleagues coded it with one cross representing 50,000 people with no home and one stick figure represented 10,000 dead."

Tamas has a background in public health, and has been working for two years as a member of a community health and development team with World Concern Burma (Myanmar). Bronwyn has been involved with another international NGO on issues of HIV and AIDS, and is now working with a local NGO in health care.

Tamas is also a singer / songwriter, widely acclaimed in Indi music press. See http://www.myspace.com/tamaswells for his latest music news.

Related Countries:

Burma

Related TEAR Partners:

World Concern Burma