I received this yesterday from PDG and PRC (Past ROTI Chair) Doug
Vincent and felt ROTIans would like another 1st hand report re
Myanmar. Ron ROTI Chair 07-09 RC Clark Centennial D 3790
As you are probably aware, the cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar on May 3rd.
According to the latest reports over 78,000 Burmese have died and
another 55,917 are missing. Myanmar is the country where the
Rotarians in Rotary International District 6740 paid to complete a
water project at the Galillee Orphans Home in February. The orphanage
is about 65 miles outside of Yangon, the capitol of Myanmar.
Our friend and Rotary Assistant Governor J. T. Warring from Newport,
California who accompanied Polky and I while in Myanmar was in
Thailand for a conference on Asian Water Projects when the cyclone hit
Myanmar. He was scheduled to fly into Yangon on Sunday, the next day,
to participate in the completion of two more water systems at
orphanages prior to the beginning of the monsoon season.
We have been anxiously awaiting an email from him to get first hand a
report on the situation and the effect it has had on our orphanages.
We received the following email a couple of nights ago and I thought I
would share it with you. (See email below)
Tom Ashford
District Governor
District 6740
------------ ---------
Please forgive this, necessarily, "one size fits all" email. With days
here averaging 18 hours since I landed Yangon Monday night, there is
little time left for other than immediate relief-service priorities.
Multiple-category recipients, from Rotary leaders to family and
friends, get answers by enumerated points below. First, let me set
stage here.
Rotarian Jan Von Koss and I were to fly here from Bangkok May 04, but
were stopped at check-in due to airport closure at Yangon. Cause:
about total national electrical/communic ations failure from May 03
cyclone. Airport reopened May 05. But hotels, then operating on
24-hour generator power, dwindling fuel/food/water supplies and road
closures everywhere including airport ground access, were threatened
with closure by May 08, absent some relief. So I stood by (as it
happened, usefully), in Pattaya, Thailand, until General Manager of my
usual good hotel here called me to come on May 09.
When I flew in May 12 after concluding Rotary project launch in
Pattaya, Yangon scene was of pervasive, ground-level devastation.
Buddhist monks, thousands of citizen volunteers and military had
cleared main roads of trees, utility poles, felled traffic signals and
debris, but everywhere else, the destruction was nearly untouched.
Tens, if not hundreds, of thousand trees, were literally ripped apart
in this once-attractively green cityscape by winds measured at times
at over 200 KPH. Houses large and small had their roofs, many of these
of corrugated metal, ripped away. Even the solid stone Catholic
Archdiocese Cathedral held, but suffered damage to both its steeples.
Family residences numbering 40,000 were destroyed in Yangon alone. The
sense throughout the city is as if a giant scythe had just swept
across it, leveling everything that stood in its path. Yet, conversely
and unlike a war zone, no tall buildings or major structures were
reduced to rubble. Well-built, they held, but often with roof damage
and destructive leakage.
A majority of restaurants are still closed along with several hotels,
many suffering severe damage. Public transit is very uneven still.
Electricity and telephone are slowly returning, but with no
reliability. The city is still eerily dark at night, but improving. Of
course, in this military state, looting or street crime are virtually
non-existent. On this, my 19th travel to Burma, my wonderful project
field team continues in place, including friend guide and project
administrator, CEO of local travel agency (also a very close friend),
honorary adopted son (and team photographer) and full-time car and
driver. So we'll ably shepherd anyone coming in from Rotary to join us
here. I am here to June 02, then back to Pattaya, Thailand on
video-documentary post-production through June 07, then back to Los
Angeles for Rotary International annual meeting June 12-19.
On a per-country basis, damage and life-losses in Myanmar may well
exceed that of the multi-country tsunami tragedy of 12/26/04. Total
fatalities then were 230,000; here, the UN also calculates 100,000
plus for just this one country. May go higher. A seeming
contradiction: property damage overwhelming to urban Yangon, but with
probably fewer than 100 deaths. However, in sparsely-populated
Ayeyarwaddy Delta southwest of Yangon (the nation's "rice bowl"),
little capital structure, but simple bamboo shanties in the tens of
thousands were swept away. But, along with them uncounted lives of
men, women and children of already humblest circumstances, along with
their pets and farm animals. Stories reach us of bodies decomposing
rapidly in hot salt water (it is summer here), with no one to remove,
much less bury, them. Equally tragic are the estimated tens of
thousands of persons young and old, isolated on islands newly created
by the cyclone aftermath's steeply rising waters. They are dying of
thirst, starvation and perhaps too soon, cataclysmic disease, with no
one to help them. To very many of them, the only access would be
powered flat boat or helicopter.
I need not repeat the difficulties you've already learnt from the
world media in getting such help, including flood, shelter and
medicines, to where they are needed, in time to avert a "second-wave"
humanitarian disaster. Here, it all feels too heartbreakingly familiar
to yours truly, who video-documented the "Aftermath of a Tsunami" for
Rotary 38 months ago. But the difference is that massive multinational
aid poured in to the sufferers without delay nor impediment. But now,
let's address what caring people here on the ground are doing to help:
Rotarians from Pattaya and D-3340 in Thailand immediately raised
105,000 Thai Baht and sent it in with me for immediate direct aid. At
the direction of the medical doctors we serve with here, we yesterday
purchased three 6.5kw diesel generators with pump and compressor each,
to be installed at each of three community orphanage sites where there
are unusually large clear-water reserves at extraordinary depths
(500-600 feet down) and centrally-located in larger surrounding
communities with known shortages of potable water. We installed the
first of these today (Thursday) and plan to deploy the other two
tomorrow, and have them fully operational. The balance of these funds
will provide direct food aid to one or more orphanages whose needs we
already know, probably in purchases of 50 kg bags of rice.
These same Rotarians from five Pattaya clubs are already coalescing
with the other service clubs, the 400-member powerhouse women's club,
the Mayor's office, and churches and individuals to raise another
minimum one million Baht for direct aid to the hungry, which will be
delivered in-country by Thais, who have much easier access than
Westerners. And, with the land border now open at Mae Sot, trucks are
soon to be loaded with clothing and other relief supplies from
Thailand. In connection with this wonderful effort, I spoke to three
Rotary groups and participated in other plan sessions in Pattaya last
week and may address a larger meeting there.
The first Rotary direct service there since 1962
continues. Rotary clubs and districts in California, Indiana, Kentucky
and Thailand have since last December completed turnkey water delivery
systems at three orphanage sites and are completing two more now and
in June. Designed to last 60 years by a local civil
engineer-contractor we commissioned last year, Rotary has promised to
build 65 of these in the next few years.
From Rotary's beginning here, in 2005, we have cooperated with an
awesome Myanmar business corporation devoted to charitable purposes. I
am now officially a volunteer consultant to this corporation. Called
the Myanmar Compassion Project, it was founded by a distinguished
Burmese medical doctor now retired from senior roles in the National
Public Health service and co-led with an American surgeon. Their
charter, heretofore, has been to provide a gratis service of all
preventive, curative, surgical and dental care for the 6000 plus
children in more than 200 independent orphanages in this troubled
nation. As of this week however, I am proud to be witness to their
decision to permanently expand their charter to a "first-responder
domestic emergency life-sustaining relief organization," while
continuing to fully serve their original charter. Due to "MCP's"
immense earned credibility in the global relief NGO community, they are
being besieged with offers from "name-brand" relief organizations and
funds sources, to receive both cash, service and joint venture
participations.
This very evening, I met three guys in blue-and-gold Rotary shirts
in the lobby of another major Yangon hotel. These two Birmingham Brits
and a Glasgow Scots will tomorrow escort a shipment of 1400 Rotary
"shelter boxes" to landing at Yangon Airport, whence they are to be
deployed to dire need in the delta. And, they tell me more shipments
of shelter boxes are coming. Furthermore, they told me that the
government-owned TV network has already given visible play to the
Rotary logo.
The price in human tragedy was too awesomely high, but it is with a
humbling feeling of joy and thanksgiving to find those of us who were
already trying to help these hurting people, now being joined by the
much bigger shoulders of the global helping community, with its
powerful floodlights now illuminating the needs here for all to see.
In closing, there is much more going on for good here than this "blind
man beside the elephant" can possibly yet know about. But, I hope I am
encouraging your own good efforts by describing the little I do know.
Please forward the foregoing to anyone you choose, and feel free to
email me with your comments, suggestions, and particularly, any
concrete offers of assistance for this wonderful people. But please
forgive that the press of time and urgent tasks here will severely
limit additional responses before my USA return
PDG Douglas W Vincent, RC Woodstock-Oxford
