Referring to this excerpt from BBC News article on 13 May regarding the relief measures in Burma for the Cyclone Nargis:
Vice-Admiral Soe Thein said [the country] was grateful for the aid shipment from the United States that arrived on Monday but insisted that "skilful humanitarian workers are not necessary".
Oh...really? That makes me wonder if we have more than enough skilful aid workers. =)
Before the cyclone (15 Apr 2008):
After the cyclone (5 May 2008):
It can be clearly seen how much of the region is under flood water. What a disaster!
Google Earth has released two KML layers for the Cyclone Nargis. One is to show the cyclone path and the other is showing the flood water as detected by the satellite. In the picture below, the red areas are all flood water. As you can also see, the cyclone reached category 4 before hitting the Ayeyarwaddy Delta region.
You can download the cyclone path animation kml here and the flood water layer kml here. The US Naval Research also released the cyclone life cycle kml file.
Original Google Earth blog posts: post1 and post2.
Official Google Blog about helping the victims in Burma.
Alternatively, you can view the images at Google Map at this link.
According to Xinhua news, US Navy stationed at Thailand is now awaiting Burma's response to initiate the relief efforts in the cyclone-hit areas. I sincerely hope that the Burmese government will give their consent to the US Navy to get to the areas inside Burma. It's not time to care about their politics and it's more important that aids arrive before more people pass away from the shortage of food, clean water and medical supplies.
Google.com is now launching a donation drive to help the cyclone victims in Burma. As a person from Burma, I'm really glad that Google is helping my country.
If you would like to participate, you can either go to Google homepage or this direct page and donate using Google Checkout.
Thanks Google!
This is the First Lady's speech on recent cyclone Nargis that ripped off Yangon.
The cyclone hit the former Burmese capital Rangoon and caused a tremendous amount of devastation. The wind speed was 120mph, and in the wake of the cyclone, the Yangon International Airport was shut down, redirecting the landing aircrafts to Mandalay; electricity was cut off in most parts of the city; MRTV transmission was disrupted; roads were blocked by rooted trees; shattered pieces of glass from broken windows were everywhere; some cars were flattened by fallen trees; communications—telephone and Internet—were disrupted until the time of writing.
The government has issued state of emergency in five states of Burma. Since the communications were all cut off, any clear picture of the situation and a clearer account of what happened are not yet available; there could have been casualties and deaths but the exact count is not known.
This cyclone is the worst disaster Yangon has ever seen in my life or even in my parents' life. Never was there any such devastating tropical cyclone in Yangon, at least in my memory.
Keep up with the latest news at Google News and latest blog posts.
Updates
Videos
Some videos from YouTube
Photos
Some pictures hosted at DVB (use IE to view; I wasn't able to view them using Firefox).
A collection of pictures from various sources (AFP and Xinhua)
News
Death toll is now 241 according to the AFP news.
"According to the latest information we have, altogether 19 people were killed in Yangon division and then about 222 people killed in Ayeyawaddy division," an information ministry official told AFP.
