Word: waterous
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...junta claims otherwise. State-controlled media show high-ranking soldiers in uniform overseeing the timely delivery of relief supplies to a grateful people. But a tour of the cyclone-ravaged communities along the Pyapon River reveals the military's efforts to be criminally inadequate. Deprived of food, water, shelter and medical supplies, and stalked by disease, those who survived the cyclone might yet perish in its aftermath. A natural disaster has come and gone. A new, man-made one has already begun...
...days afterwards the Pyapon River was clogged with bodies. Like hundreds of other delta villages, Myinkakon had few sturdy buildings to shelter in and no higher ground to flee to. And anyway, says Myint Swe, there was no way to outrun the storm surge, a wall of fast-moving water taller than the tallest man, which raced out of the darkness without warning and swept away tens of thousands of lives across the low-lying region...
Today, his boat chugs past the village of Pankyun, where most houses have been razed by the wind and the water, their occupants drowned or gone. Fishing boats have capsized or been grounded. One has been lifted 100 meters inland, so powerful was the surge of water. A dead baby floats face-down in water amid more putrefying livestock. Kalaylay...
...buffalo, the disaster has robbed many villagers of their livelihood. Impoverished, they cannot afford to buy much food, especially with post-cyclone prices rising. They have a store of unhusked rice, which is damp and inedible, and many people now survive on coconuts blown down from the trees. Clean water is also scarce. Their well is now polluted with sea-water, so villagers take water from the river and boil it, or collect the rain flowing from the monastery's shattered tin roofs...
...diarrhea, when before the cyclone there had been none to speak of. These are the ominous first signs that disease is stalking the villagers, whose poor diet makes them weak and vulnerable. They have no medicines until we give them what we are carrying: a few paracetamol and some water purification tablets. The villagers smiled and waved in gratitude when we left. It is the only aid they have received...