Project Katrina

National Geographic has a detailed analysis on what happened in Myanmar with a ton of photos, background, and technical information. Well worth a read.

Packing winds upward of 120 miles an hour (193 kilometers an hour), Cyclone Nargis became one of Asia’s deadliest storms by hitting land at one of the lowest points in Myanmar (also called Burma) and setting off a storm surge that reached 25 miles (40 kilometers) inland.

“When we saw the [storm] track, I said, ‘Uh oh, this is not going to be good,’” said Mark Lander, a meteorology professor at the University of Guam.

“It would create a big storm surge. It was like Katrina going into New Orleans.”

“Cyclone” is the name given to a hurricane when it occurs in the northern Indian Ocean or, as is the case with Cyclone Nargis, the Bay of Bengal.

The news out of Myanmar keeps getting worse:

Sources said 200,000 people were already dead or dying.

But the figure could rise to half a million through disease and hunger if the nation’s hardline army rulers continue to block aid for the devastated lowlands of the Irrawaddy Delta. That would dwarf the 230,000 deaths across South East Asia in the 2004 catastrophe.

[….]

“The bodies need to be collected and burnt as soon as possible or disease will claim many more lives. But the government has organised nothing and its 400,000 soldiers are doing nothing while undistributed aid piles up.