After the Storm

By CHARLES METZGER SEPTEMBER, 2008 - VOLUME 16 NO.9

RECOMMEND (381)

TEXT SIZE

Broken but not beaten—the victims of Cyclone Nargis

FOUR months after Cyclone Nargis, large areas of the Irrawaddy delta are still a devastated wasteland. The fierce storm unleashed the greatest natural catastrophe ever to hit Burma, and it was clear from the start that it would take years rather than months for the worst affected areas to recover.

Multimedia (View)

At least 140,000 people died or are still missing. Families were ripped apart, villages decimated, livelihoods and local economies destroyed. Almost 500,000 homes were flattened by the winds or carried away by the flood waters.

Between 40 and 60 percent of the delta’s rice fields were inundated with seawater and will take up to two years to become fully productive again. The buffaloes needed to till the fields were swept away in their thousands, while the same fate was suffered by other livestock on which the delta’s farming economy depends.

The delta’s fishing industry was all but wiped out and may take years to fully recover. Many fishermen were among the dead.

Tens of thousands of landless unemployed are still without jobs, dependent on daily food handouts to survive. By a cruel irony, the cyclone robbed the region and its economy of countless skilled workers, farmers and fishermen who can’t be replaced overnight.

Four thousand schools were destroyed, rupturing the region’s academic routine. Seventy-five percent of the hospitals and clinics in the cyclone-hit areas were knocked out of service.

I visited the delta to check on the pace of recovery there and found sobering evidence that much remains to be done before anything like normal life returns to this tormented region.

Despite the bad hand fate has dealt them, however, the people of the delta are displaying remarkable fortitude and resilience.