By Dale McFeatters
Scripps Howard News Service
The Indian Meteorological Service says it gave the Myanmar government 48 hours warning of the arrival of Cyclone Nargis and an accurate prediction of its track and its severity.
With two days warning, residents of low-lying areas could have been evacuated and others warned to seek shelter and stockpile food and water.
That may not have been a perfect precaution but it's better than the actual outcome ― official tolls as of Wednesday of 23,000 dead, 41,000 missing and 1 million homeless. Relief workers say the death toll is more like 50,000 and that 2 million to 3 million may be homeless.
The ruling military junta insists it did try to warn the populace. If so, it did a miserable job of it and interviews with scattered survivors indicated that they had no recollection of being told they were in the path of a killer storm.
Even as food riots were breaking out in several cities, one of the ruling generals was quoted by state-run television as saying the situation was ``returning to normal."
This shows an appalling lack of urgency since hard on the heels of a natural disaster, especially in a steamy, swampy tropical country, come disease, dehydration and starvation.
Help is available. At least a dozen countries were poised Wednesday to dispatch relief workers, helicopters and supplies ― food, clean water, medicine, plastic sheeting, mosquito nets ― but the insular and xenophobic government can't seem to bring itself to act.
According to press accounts, it seems unable or unwilling to issue visas to foreign relief workers and the arrival of aid has been stymied by the government's insistence that its own workers distribute the aid.
To the long list of failings of Myanmar's military dictatorship we should also add criminal negligence.
Dale McFeatters is an editorial writer of Scripps Howard News Service (http://www.shns.com/).
Source:http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2008/05/137_23838.html
Scripps Howard News Service
The Indian Meteorological Service says it gave the Myanmar government 48 hours warning of the arrival of Cyclone Nargis and an accurate prediction of its track and its severity.
With two days warning, residents of low-lying areas could have been evacuated and others warned to seek shelter and stockpile food and water.
That may not have been a perfect precaution but it's better than the actual outcome ― official tolls as of Wednesday of 23,000 dead, 41,000 missing and 1 million homeless. Relief workers say the death toll is more like 50,000 and that 2 million to 3 million may be homeless.
The ruling military junta insists it did try to warn the populace. If so, it did a miserable job of it and interviews with scattered survivors indicated that they had no recollection of being told they were in the path of a killer storm.
Even as food riots were breaking out in several cities, one of the ruling generals was quoted by state-run television as saying the situation was ``returning to normal."
This shows an appalling lack of urgency since hard on the heels of a natural disaster, especially in a steamy, swampy tropical country, come disease, dehydration and starvation.
Help is available. At least a dozen countries were poised Wednesday to dispatch relief workers, helicopters and supplies ― food, clean water, medicine, plastic sheeting, mosquito nets ― but the insular and xenophobic government can't seem to bring itself to act.
According to press accounts, it seems unable or unwilling to issue visas to foreign relief workers and the arrival of aid has been stymied by the government's insistence that its own workers distribute the aid.
To the long list of failings of Myanmar's military dictatorship we should also add criminal negligence.
Dale McFeatters is an editorial writer of Scripps Howard News Service (http://www.shns.com/).
Source:http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2008/05/137_23838.html
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