Things must be bad in Burma. After the Boxing Day tsunami all that I ever read about damage in that country was that the Myanmar government reported “damage to several coastal villages”. And while I wondered that there must be more than that, the news was swamped with stories from Sri Lanka, Thailand and elsewhere.
If the Myanmar regime, noted for its isolationism and brutality is asking for help things must be much worse.
Up to 50,000 people may have been killed and millions left homeless by the worst natural disaster in living memory in Burma, a Western aid worker fears.
The Burma country director for welfare agency Save The Children, Canadian Andrew Kirkwood, has urged the international community to act now to head off a mounting humanitarian crisis after Cyclone Nargis struck the nation on Saturday.
But he has warned it could take years for Burma, ruled by a hardline military dictatorship, to recover from the storm, which brought 190km/h winds and a monster storm surge that has inundated large areas.
While official figures tonight suggested 15,000 people had died in the cyclone, Mr Kirkwood said he feared the scale of the disaster was far greater.
"This is going to be a response that will take years to complete," Mr Kirkwood told AAP by phone from his office in Rangoon.
"We think 50,000 people are dead and millions are homeless, so this is not a humanitarian response that can be completed immediately.
"I don't think any government in the world could cope with this on their own."
Neighbouring Thailand and Bangladesh had pledged building materials and supplies, and Save The Children was negotiating with the government to bring in more by air, but Mr Kirkwood said international help was needed now.
"This storm is not just unprecedented from my time here. I've talked to people in Yangon (Rangoon) that have never seen anything like this," he said.
