Word: rangoon
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Bogalay, a town of more than 50,000 people, is a five-to six-hour journey by car or motorbike from the old capital of Rangoon. The road passes through a shattered landscape. The 120 m.p.h winds uprooted trees, snapped concrete poles carrying power lines, and blew the tops off the golden pagodas. Structures of brick and concrete are missing their roofs. Houses of wood or straw are all but destroyed. In stricken delta towns like Kungyangon, Dedaye and Pyapon, almost every structure is damaged, many beyond repair. In Bogalay itself, no building is untouched. The streets are flanked...
...Burma's junta has only five helicopters at its disposal, says a Western diplomat in Rangoon. Today, I saw only three helicopters; or perhaps I saw only one helicopter three times. There were a few cars belonging to foreign aid agencies such as MSF and UNICEF, but these were ferrying experts here to assess the situation, not to provide relief...
...When night falls, the delta is swallowed by the darkness. Candles burn dimly in the ruins. Most of Rangoon is also without power, and only the well-lit Shwedagon, the nation's most scared pagoda, is visible from a distance. Otherwise, Burma's largest city?a city of 4 million people?is barely a flicker on the horizon...
...junta still plans to hold a referendum on its new constitution on May 10, a move that is expected to legally legitimize military rule. Authorities have even promised to expel cyclone victims sheltering in a school in northern Rangoon so that it can be used as a polling station, claims a Western aid agency. Meanwhile, foreign embassies have received formal invitations to observe the proceedings, "probably to distract us from the lack of a relief effort," observes the Western diplomat...
...Thursday, a few government trucks were ferrying water and medicine to the delta from the commercial capital of Rangoon, which was also hit by the cyclone. But a few dozen trucks will do little to allay the vast destruction. In Bogalay, once a prosperous trading port, one third of buildings have collapsed. At a jetty along the Irrawady, two nearly week-old bodies, an adult and a child, lay among the storm's detritus of plywood, bamboo and coconut husks. Near the corpses, people went about their lives, tying bamboo poles together to build temporary lodging and jostling for limited...