Zeebeving? Waarom komt er geen bericht over Myanmar?

quote:

Zeebeving Azië
Op 26 december 2004 heeft zich voor de kust van het Indonesische eiland Sumatra een sterke zeebeving voorgedaan. Door deze zeebeving is een vloedgolf ontstaan die buiten Sumatra ook in gedeelten van Thailand, het zuiden van India, Sri Lanka, Maleisië grote schade heeft aangericht.

De vloedgolf heeft ook in Myanmar schade aangericht in de badplaatsen Ngapali Beach, doch voor zover kon worden nagegaan is de schade in deze badplaatsen niet groot.

Aan de zuidkust van het land (Thanintharyi Division) en in de Ayeyarwaddy-Delta zijn dorpen overstroomd en bruggen en gebouwen beschadigd. Onder de hierbij gevallen menselijke slachoffers bevinden zich volgens mededeling van de regering van Myanmar geen buitenlanders.

quote:

Burma probably hit by quake hard

By Ellen Nakashima
The Washington Post Monday, January 03, 2005




JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The tsunami last week probably slammed the southernmost area of Burma, killing more people than were reported dead by the country's ruling military junta, but the area has not been independently surveyed because of tightly restricted access, experts say.

A team from Doctors Without Borders and the International Committee for the Red Cross hopes this week to tour the islands off the country's southern coast in the Andaman Sea, where damage is believed to be great. A U.N. team also is trying to survey southern Burma.

Burmese officials have reported that 53 people were killed across the country, which has 1,650 miles of coast on the Indian Ocean. In comparison, two of Burma's neighbors, Thailand and India, each lost thousands of people. And in Indonesia, more than 80,000 are confirmed dead.

Steven N. Ward, a geophysicist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, created a computer model of the earthquake that triggered the tsunami. According to the model, southern Burma "should have been hit equally" as hard as southern Thailand, he said.

"This earthquake was 1,000 kilometers long," Ward added. "The aftershocks broke at least as far. I see no scientific reason why a tsunami wouldn't hit equally strong a few hundred kilometers north" of southern Thailand.

Burma's government, run by a reclusive clique of military generals, is notoriously reticent about reporting on natural disasters and has been dismissive of foreign aid.

A government newspaper, the New Light of Myanmar, reported Saturday that officials toured two beach resorts and noted that they were "thronged with vacationers including tourists, and everything was going well."

In the first assessment of the damage in Burma, a team from the World Food Program and UNICEF found that two of 26 towns suffered serious damage, and that 10,000 people were in need of immediate food aid. The Irrawaddy area near the capital, Rangoon, was not hit as hard. Twenty-nine people were killed and 2,800 people displaced there, according to the survey, completed Saturday.

Tony Banbury, the World Food Program's regional director in Asia, said the government turned down his organization's initial offer to help assess damage and assist survivors. The group eventually was granted permission to enter Irrawaddy.

The biggest problem in Irrawaddy is a lack of clean drinking water, according to the World Food Program. The few tanks used to collect rainwater have been destroyed, and villagers cannot afford to buy drinking water, it said.

According to a report by the Agence France-Presse news agency, a Burmese fishing village of 600 people was swept into the sea by the tsunami, leaving 17 dead, but few other reports have trickled out of the country.