Project Katrina

The Independent reports in detail on their journey to Beichuan, maybe the city hit the hardest by the recent earthquake.

Reaching Beichuan is a long march into hell. When you finally emerge scrabbling through the dirt into the town, what lies before you is a breathtaking vision of horror. Official estimates say China’s worst natural disaster in 30 years has claimed 50,000 lives so far, but looking at the devastation here, it is hard not to imagine the final toll will be much, much higher.

Beichuan county in Sichuan province used to be home to 160,000 people, and most of them lived in the now-forsaken town of the same name, nestling in one of the world’s most beautiful valleys. But everyone is gone, either dead or having abandoned their flattened home.

Beichuan was too close to the epicentre of this week’s earthquake to stand a chance. At least 80 per cent of it is destroyed, with many thousands of bodies still buried in the rubble. It’s hard to imagine this place ever functioning as a town again.

There is still no access by road. People’s Liberation Army soldiers rally behind red flags at a rescue station three kilometres away, before starting the trek into the heart of this shattered place.

I hate to interrupt the ongoing primary and “appeasement” obsessions, but this seems like a big deal to me:

Troops dug burial pits in this quake-shattered town and black smoke poured from crematorium chimneys elsewhere in central China as priorities began shifting Thursday from the hunt for survivors to dealing with the dead. Officials said the final toll could more than double to 50,000.

As the massive military-led recovery operation inched farther into regions cut off by Monday’s quake, the government sought to enlist the public’s help with an appeal for everything from hammers to cranes and, in a turnabout, began accepting foreign aid missions, the first from regional rival Japan.

In other human suffering on a massive scale:

The United Nations said on Wednesday up to 2.5 million people might have been affected by the Myanmar cyclone and proposed a high-level donors conference as the Myanmar junta again limited foreign aid.

The European Union’s top aid official said the military government’s restrictions on foreign aid workers and equipment were increasing the risk of starvation and disease.

U.N. humanitarian affairs chief John Holmes told reporters between 1.6 and 2.5 million people were “severely affected” by Cyclone Nargis and urgently needed aid, up from a previous estimate of at least 1.5 million.

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej met Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein in Yangon and urged him to ease visa rules for relief workers. He said he was told Myanmar could “tackle the problem by themselves.”

Myanmar state television raised its official toll to 38,491 dead, 1,403 injured and 27,838 missing.

The International Federation of the Red Cross estimated on the basis of reports from 22 organizations working in Myanmar that between 68,833 and 127,990 people had died.

If we lived in anything close to a rational world our news media would be reporting on these important (and very sad) stories 24/7. I think it would be a gross understatement to say they both feature human tragedy on an epic scale. Now back to the “appeasement” coverage.

The Associated Press is reporting these grim predictions:

The Red Cross estimated Wednesday that the cyclone death toll in Myanmar could be as high as 128,000—a much larger figure than the government tally. The U.N. warned a second wave of deaths will follow unless the military regime lets in more aid quickly.

The grim forecast came as heavy rains drenched the devastated Irrawaddy River delta, disrupting aid operations already struggling to reach up to 2.5 million people in urgent need of food, water and shelter.

“Another couple of days exposed to those conditions can only lead to worsening health conditions and compound the stress people are living in,” said Shantha Bloemen, a spokeswoman for UNICEF.

From the department of I can’t make this shit up:

“Either they are isolated or callous,” Bush told CBS News radio in an interview. “There’s no telling how many people have lost their lives as a result of the slow response.”

He said the “world ought to be angry and condemn” the junta, which has been widely condemned for stalling the disaster relief effort.

I am pretty sure much of the world was thinking the same thing as New Orleans drowned and people in the Convention Center and Super Dome waited days and day for help.

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.

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“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.

Imagine this, elected officials are worried FEMA won’t be able to deliver help and support to tornado victims in a timely manner:

Even before the federal reinforcements arrived, a Democratic senator was warning the Federal Emergency Management Agency to do better than past disasters, including, of course, Hurricane Katrina.

“I have talked to FEMA Director David Paulison and made it clear that I will not tolerate a slow reaction time,” Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas said in a short statement. “FEMA must not use bureaucratic excuses to avoid helping Arkansans.”

NBC News reported that his statement echoed the concern of other local and state officials in the tornado-afflicted states, which included one still reeling from Katrina: Mississippi.

Today Bush visited the tornado-battered South and offered this promise to residents:

I don’t want people to think something is going to happen that’s not going to happen. And therefore when we say something is going to happen to help them get their feet back on the ground, it will happen.

Just for anyone breathing a sigh of relief knowing that now Bush has said help is on the way, keep in mind what he said in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:

And tonight I also offer this pledge of the American people: Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.

Twister-Battered Region Has New Worries

At first, rescuers thought it was a doll. Then it moved. In a grassy pasture strewn with toys, splintered lumber and bricks tossed by the tornado’s widespread wrath, 11-month old Kyson Stowell was lying face down in the mud, 150 yards from where his home once stood.

“It looked like a baby doll,” said David Harmon, a firefighter who had already combed the field once looking for survivors. Then he checked for a pulse. “He was laying there motionless … and he took a breath of air and started crying.”

The field had already been combed once for survivors, and finding anyone alive seemed improbable. Hours after the storm, there was devastation everywhere: The body of the boy’s mother was found in the same field, houses were wiped to concrete slabs and a brick post office was blown to bits. But except for a few
scrapes, Kyson was fine.