IRIN
MYANMAR: What if another Cyclone Nargis comes?
17 September 2009


AYEYARWADY DELTA, 17 September 2009 (IRIN) - Nine-year-old Chit Lin Nwe 
owes her life to a tree. As Cyclone Nargis swept away her home, family 
and friends in Aung Chan Thar village in Myanmar's Ayeyarwady River 
Delta, she clung to its sturdy trunk.

"As the water came up, I had to climb higher," she said. The storm surge 
that accompanied Nargis was more than three metres high.

Not everyone was lucky enough to find a tree or shelter in the flat, 
mostly exposed terrain of the southern delta. Village headmen IRIN spoke 
to recited the death toll in their small communities: "500 died", or 
"1,000 died". Often it was almost everyone they had known, and more than 
a year later many people still seem traumatised.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said about 14,000 
hectares of the delta's 275,000 hectares of mangrove forests had been 
destroyed, but Chit Lin Nwe's tree is still standing. "Should another 
cyclone come around, I know what to do," she grinned.

Nargis killed more than 140,000 people and ruined countless lives and 
livelihoods; cyclones, tropical storms and storm surges are likely to 
become more frequent and intense as a result of climate change in the 
region, yet the survivors and returnees still living in the delta seem 
unprepared.

"The people in those flimsy huts with hardly any tree cover, working in 
flat paddy fields, remain exposed and vulnerable," said an aid worker. A 
villager remarked, "We listen to the storm warning on the radio more 
closely [since Nargis], but we don't know what to do."

Preparing the 3.5 million people of the delta, where population density 
reaches 100 per sq km - the highest in the country - for future 
disasters will not be easy. It will also be difficult to evacuate those 
living on the banks of a complex river system comprising many streams 
and estuaries.

"As many villages are island villages, evacuation is quite tough," said 
a local disaster expert. "Moreover, the delta is flat, so storm surge 
due to cyclone compounds the problem."

Building cyclone shelters and scaling up early warning systems are among 
the most feasible solutions, and the government has announced plans to 
build 20 shelters in coastal areas. In the village of Oak Pho, IRIN saw 
a cyclone shelter under construction.

The shelter will accommodate 500 people and is being constructed by the 
Forest Resource Environment Development and Conservation Association 
(FREDA), a semi-official NGO formed by retired personnel from the 
Ministry of Forestry, but at least 3,000 live in the village.

It is all in the communication

A local disaster expert said the bottleneck in early warning 
dissemination was between urban townships and villages. "What does 130 
miles per hour [about 210km per hour] of wind speed mean to a villager? 
Also, not many people have a radio, which is the only source of 
warning."

Warnings should be clear, with directions on what needs to be done: that 
could involve enlisting one or two persons in each village with a mobile 
phone as part of the early warning team; monasteries often have 
loudspeakers, which could be used to disseminate warnings; monasteries 
are usually built of brick and cement or stone, and could also be used 
as cyclone shelters.

It would also be a good idea to restore the mangroves destroyed by 
Nargis. Coastal trees and forests cannot prevent storm surge flooding 
but a dense mangrove cover can act as a windbreak, take the brunt of the 
surge waves, and slow them down. Mangroves also trap soil, counteracting 
shoreline erosion.


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