IFRC: Aid moving out but more needed
[As of May 9th,] over 220,000 people have received some form of aid from government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), other organizations and the general public. Over 80,000 of them have been served by Myanmar Red Cross … Food, hygiene kits, water purification tablets, mosquito nets, sanitary supplies and most importantly shelter materials. Shelter material is an absolute priority now, although we are keeping a very close eye on the health situation. With a lot of stagnant water around we are already hearing reports of isolated outbreaks of intestinal and mosquito-borne diseases.
* This Unosat map has a lot of information including the cyclone’s path and extent of flooding over an existing political map. It appears that Cyclone Nargis made landfall as a Category 2 on our Saffir-Simpson scale.
* From NASA Earth Observatory:
* The Dartmouth Flood Observatory has a simulation of Nargis’s storm surge as a Google Earth layer and a “flyover” movie.
* The extent of flooding in the Burmese capital city of Rangoon/Yangon is discussed here.
* News footage from the morning shows members of the Burmese military posing for photo ops while handing out relief packages to a handful of cyclone victims. I suspect that these folks are not being told that the aid came from UN drops, but instead from the government itself (Update: my suspicions are confirmed). However, as the Australian PM says, the blame game can wait.
