The plane, with a cargo of bottled water, blankets, and mosquito nets, originally got permission to make the flight last Friday, but that agreement was quickly rescinded. Two days later the United States was again given a green light, and on a sticky morning at a military airfield two hours by car south of Bangkok, the aircraft was loaded with emergency supplies in just 20 minutes and sent to Burma. “It’s a start,” said Lt. Col. Douglas Powell. “It’s not very much, but we hope we’ll be able to do more.”
Indeed, the real mission was to make doing more—a lot more—possible. “This is a step-by-step approach without a lot of strings or conditions, a trial flight to help everyone get comfortable,” said Bill Berger, the leader of the USAID Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART). Adm. Timothy Keating, the top American commander in Thailand, said U.S. ships could mount a massive relief operations “as soon as we get permission” from the leaders in Burma, who call their country Myanmar. Keating and USAID administrator Henrietta Fore were aboard the C-130 and, in Rangoon, met senior officials, including a vice admiral and two government ministers, who showed them a map of the disaster area and pointed out where help is needed most. Keating offered to deploy 4,000 U.S. Marines, three ships, six C-130s and numerous rescue helicopters into Myanmar “in 36 to 40 hours.” The officials he met said they would consider the assistance. “They were very clear they could use help from the outside,” Fore said.
Behind the bonhomie, frustration with Burma’s rulers is mounting. They have shocked the world with their callous response to the worst natural disaster in the country’s modern history, a cyclone that sent a storm surge 30 miles inland and may kill as many as 100,000 people. (As of Monday, Burmese authorities had put the official toll at around 30,000, but undiscovered bodies and post-cyclone epidemics could push the casualty count far higher.) With each additional day without help, the situation facing the survivors becomes direr. Yet the generals who rule the nation have allowed few aid workers into their country, preferring instead to have their soldiers deliver aid. Last week troops seized biscuits flown in by the World Food Program, inexplicably keeping them on the tarmac for two days before releasing them to hungry people.
Slowly, however, the door is opening, and as it does foreign aid agencies will see their frustrations over being denied access replaced by frustration at the daunting logistical challenges that lie ahead. Roads, rough under the best conditions, are either submerged or debris-clogged. Boats, the transport mode of choice into the delta, are scarce because so many were splintered in the storm. In all, the cyclone left nearly 30 square miles under water and destroyed 95 percent of the buildings in seven townships. To make matters worse, aid has to pass through either Rangoon’s tiny airport or the country’s lone deep-water port before it can get to the flood zone.
Rescue workers who have visited the hardest-hit areas recount scenes of utter devastation. Whole villages have disappeared, thousands of children have been orphaned, and the injured have not been treated. There’s no food, no shelter and no clean water for survivors. Where floodwaters have receded the fetid land is still strewn with decomposing bodies, raising the specter of waterborne illnesses. On May 8 the World Health Organization warned that malaria and dengue fever outbreaks could occur within three to four weeks of flooding, yet WHO epidemiologists are still waiting on the sidelines in Thailand because they can’t procure visas to enter Burma. “Every day that passes is more lives lost,” said Olivier Carduner, USAID’s regional director in Southeast Asia.
Meanwhile, Burma’s state media features daily pronouncements about the government’s ample capacity to assist the victims of Cyclone Nargis. The underlying message is that junta leaders simply don’t want outside interference. The various aid agencies waiting patiently on the doorstep, though, reject the notion that the junta can manage this crisis while keeping the country cut off from the world. “No country has the capacity to deal with a disaster of this magnitude alone,” said USAID’s Berger.
