First Lady Laura Bush visits Karen refugees in national costumes during her visit to Mae La refugee camp in Thailand's Mae Sot town, Thursday.

Dan Rivers
Bangkok Correspondent

It was never going to put the press pack in the best of moods. A start time of 4:45 is so early, it’s almost a late night out for many of us. But we dutifully turned up to have our bags sniffed by a bored looking German Shepherd whose tailed had been curiously cut off (Security risk may be? Danger of flying cups and saucers, if he wags it too much??). It was then off in a huge convoy of mini-buses, SUVs, limos and police cars. A brief glimpse for me as to what it would be like to be royalty, having every major road emptied of traffic, and lined by Thai policemen. Our plane to the border was slightly less regal though – a C130, with netting seats in the back for the press and legions of secret service guys. An hour later, we arrived in Mae Sot, a northern Thai border town, close to Myanmar formerly Burma, to a torrential downpour.

Speeding though the lush green jungle along a surprisingly good road for exactly 45 minutes before arriving at Mae La refugee camp. I say camp but it’s really a mini-town of more than 38,000 refugees, mostly ethnic Karen who’ve fled from fighting over the border. Houses are meticulously built from bamboo, with roofs of over-lapping leaves. Laura Bush and daughter Barbara, along with their coterie of advisers, security guards and press officials must have seemed like an alien invasion to these isolated people. I wonder how the Karen viewed the insane rush that accompanied the whole event, 3 minutes here, 4 minutes there, the press being almost dragged and pushed from photo op. to photo op.

The Karen certainly aren’t in a hurry – many have been stuck in this camp with no chance of leaving for more than 20 years. The camp has its own shops, schools and economy, but it is still effectively an open prison for these people, who desperately want to return to their homeland.

We managed to chat to one family who were lucky enough to have been given permission to be resettled in South Carolina – the contrast from the camp in the Thai jungle to the southern United States will be huge and daunting. Yet they seemed excited. After years here living in a bamboo hut with no electricity and no running water, surely any change would be considered good.

Laura Bush has taken the issue of Myanmar to her heart – critics of her husband’s policies though would argue US sanctions are not working, and are only serving to increase the poverty of ordinary people. But as rushed, and incongruous as the First Lady’s visit was, it did throw a spotlight on the terrible plight of these refugees.

There are eight other camps like Mae La – with more than 140 thousand people in total, left in a bureaucratic limbo – unable to settle properly in Thailand, unable to return home, many hoping and praying they will get their resettlement papers and have the chance to join the more than 4,000 other people from Mae La who’ve started over in the United States.

A road construction crew in Myanmar adds new surface to a highway north of Yangoon.

Naida Pasion
Director Of Programs
Save the Children

It’s been 24 days since Cyclone Nargis wrought havoc across the Irrawaddy Delta and Yangon in Myanmar. Since the day we mounted our response to the cyclone, we have kept track of our progress, expressed in numbers of people reached, the townships and villages we covered, and the aid we provided.

Each day, as we consolidate reports from our various relief teams providing assistance in the Irrawaddy and Yangon, the question always at the forefront is: How many people have we reached? Every time I look at the figure at the bottom of our report that notes “population covered” I always feel triumphant. It’s like winning an election, consistently increasing our lead against hunger, disease and homelessness as we go deeper into unreached areas in the Irrawaddy Delta as well as in Yangon.

Today, we have reached a milestone: We passed the 200,000 mark in our coverage. We have reached 209,000 men, women and children — 20 times the number on the first day, 20% of the estimated 1 million people helped by local and international NGOs. We have delivered 628,000 kilograms of rice, 67,000 packets of oral rehydration solution, 136,000 yards of tarpaulin, among other items, across 17 townships in Yangon and Irrawaddy Delta. And this is just a partial report from the field.

In Yangon where markets are working, we provided cash amounting to 2,000 Kyats, equivalent to $1.80 per family per day, in lieu of food. This is less than the price of a café latte at a Starbucks in Bangkok. (There are no multinational fast food chains in Yangon, and Bangkok is the nearest metropolis, just an hour’s airplane ride away.) The cash allows families greater latitude to make choices: “We just need some amount for food for a few days, and for bus fare so we can go to the city and work..” This from a man whose house had been completely flattened by the cyclone. A carpenter who lost his tools asked for a hammer ($2.50) and a hand saw ($6.20). He said he would be sure to find a job with all the rebuilding going on.

Behind the numbers, there are stories of great courage, patience and determination. It took our team from Yangon nearly four days to reach Haingyi Gyun and Pyin Khayaing islands in the southeastern part of Myanmar by truck and by boat. Some of the team were themselves victims of the cyclone: Their homes were damaged, they had no water and electricity. But there was no question that they wanted to head to the islands. As of today, we have reached 47,000 there, and the numbers are increasing as I write.

Our office building was not spared by the calamity. Two of our overhead water tanks were blown. Our entire third floor was wet, so we all huddled on the first floor (our offices occupy two floors in the building), working two to three on a table or hunched on the floor amid sacks of rice and rolls of tarpaulin. The cramped working space magnified the excitement palpable among the staff and the volunteers: Yes, we are proud to be part of the response. Yes, we will go where we are needed. And yes, we’re ready to leave NOW.

Each of us in the organization morphed into the persona needed to respond to the emergency: our regional HIV/AIDS adviser transformed into an expert communications/media coordinator; program managers became agile relief logisticians and distributors; artists became adept cartographers as they mapped townships and villages reached or yet to be reached by our relief teams. I have reinvented myself into a statistician of sorts, analyzing average numbers of people reached per day in relief distribution (8,600 and increasing); number of family shelters that can be built from our cumulative distribution of plastic sheeting (13,600 and counting); average number of children under 5 years old covered per day by food and non-food items distribution (1,032 and increasing).

Of course, we are ambitious. We aim to double our coverage. We know we can only do this if we can operate on full capacity, with a team of national and international staff reaching those unreached or underserved villages. We’re ready. We’re waiting at the threshold. Most of our “cavalry” is here or on their way.

With more support coming, I am excited to have another opportunity to reinvent myself. Someone else will now be watching the numbers, vicariously experiencing the adrenaline rush, the fulfillment that comes out of watching a child’s eyes light up because help has arrived. For a change, I will be out there helping to make it happen.

People displaced by Cyclone Nargis by their tents in the Kyondah village, Myanmar

Editor's note: Save the Children is the leading independent organization creating lasting change for children in need in the United States and around the world. Scott McGill works for the organization and is currently helping with aid for the victims of Myanmar. He shares his experiences here:

Scott McGill
SavetheChildren.org
Asia Regional HIV/AIDS Adviser

It was a very good day for two major reasons here in Yangon. A good day, despite it being nearly three weeks since Cyclone Nargis changed life forever for so many in this corner of Myanmar and despite the deadly secondary consequences accruing for over 2 million people as a second disaster begins to reveal itself.

The first reason is that finally help has arrived. I am not referring to the intermittent air shipments arriving on the single runway at Yangon’s Mingladon Airport over the past few days, bringing the most basic commodities for those struggling to survive in rapidly deteriorating conditions in the Irrawaddy Delta region. Although, of course, the food, tarpaulin, medical supplies, construction materials, water purifiers and, equally important, clothing arriving are almost literally manna from heaven.

Thunderstorms have continued to roll in over the Delta areas. Survivors — even where they have been fortunate enough to get hold of a piece of tarpaulin to fashion a shelter — are cold and wet. The ground is sodden, cold and damp. Too often survivors were left literally with the clothes they were running in as they frantically tried to escape to higher ground or climb a tree to somehow get above the near 25-foot storm surges and flash floods. Or to simply stand where they were, valiantly holding their children on shoulders or even above their heads for seven hours as the water lapped around adult necks and faces.

Some survivors have talked of their desperate shame in being left entirely naked by the force of the water tearing off their shirts, dresses and lungyi (a long skirt-like sarong almost universally worn by both men and women). Such public humiliation and nakedness for most Burmese would be a fate worse than death in terms of their culture norms. For children — warm, dry, adequate clothing as the country enters six months of monsoon is absolutely critical to their survival.

Over the last week, the help that finally arrived for us in our main office in Yangon has come in the shape of our expert Disaster Response Team, pulled from various parts of the world to assist those of us who have been doing the best we can with limited staff and quite limited experience — including me, climbing my own almost vertical disaster-response learning curve. These colleagues had been with us in spirit and had been supporting us by telephone and occasional e-mail contact (when the Internet sputtered back to life) – but had been frustratingly physically distanced from us as they worked to get visas. They are the experts, come to take up the reins from those of us previously unfamiliar with the mechanics and protocols of a response to a disaster of such size and scale. They have been a welcome invasion, sweeping into the office, rapidly setting up equipment, coolly making methodical assessments of the situation, setting up a makeshift but highly efficient disaster response centre. Specialists in child protection, education in emergency, nutrition, health and those staff who know exactly how to logistically get what we need in, to where it is needed and in what exact quantities. They are familiar with emergency situations and know precisely what to do.

Of course we were all extremely pleased to see them — the original team is beginning to get tired out, and the response we have been engaged in now needs to be carried out more systematically in order to massively scale up our response as well as keep it going it over the next 6, 12 and 24 months. Full recovery is clearly going to require such a sustained trajectory.

A couple of days afterwards, I took the first few hours off since Nargis hit. Simply going to the store, ducking into the barber’s chair and getting home before dark were treats I never imagined would mean so much. Ultimately many of us will be handing over our tasks to these specialist teams and going back to our original programs — knowing we did our very best and that the response is in safe hands and that even more people will be reached and given what they so urgently need.

Oh yes – I had a second reason for it being a good day. The electrical power came back to the house. Forgetting my “green” ambitions for a short while, I took great delight in flicking on as many lights as there were at hand and enjoying as hot and as long a shower as I could manage. Somehow it felt a lot like something close to normal had returned, and I felt a little lighter. And a lot cleaner too.

How you can help...

A homeless Burmese boy drinks clean water at a monastery for a temporary shelter on the outskirts of Yangon, Myanmar.

Editor’s note: World Vision is a Christian-based humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide. Laura Cusumano Blank works for the organization. She shares her experiences with us:

Laura Cusumano Blank
World Vision emergency communications officer
www.worldvision.org

Two weeks ago, Myanmar was the lead story in every broadcast, the cover story of every newspaper.

But that's yesterday's news.

Since Cyclone Nargis hit the coast of this tiny country in Southeast Asia, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck China and violent attacks have spread throughout South Africa. And that's just this week's headlines.

I'll be honest. There was a day earlier this week when I couldn't take another news report about Myanmar. I couldn't tell one more story about a child becoming an orphan. I couldn't watch one more clip of people running after food being thrown from a truck because they were so desperate for a handful of rice...   All I wanted to do was escape to my quiet hotel room, order room service and read the latest celeb gossip. Did you know Angelina's pregnant with twins?

Compassion fatigue happens to all of us. It certainly happened to me this week. I find myself constant struggling to balance life with one foot in the developed world and one foot in the developing world. My natural inclination is to shut down, to ignore, and to disregard the struggles that I see around the world because compared to them, my life is so easy. But I can't do that. The people of Myanmar didn't choose where to be born, and neither did I. Because of the advantage I've been given, I must give that advantage to someone else. And so can you. 2.5 million people in Myanmar need you to remember them, long after their stories have been told in the news.

How you can help…

Victims of Cyclone Nargis smile as they receive donated goods from a local donor at a monastery outside the capital of Yangon, Myanmar on Monday May 19, 2008.

Editor's note: Save the Children is the leading independent organization creating lasting change for children in need in the United States and around the world. Scott McGill works for the organization and is currently helping with aid for the victims of Myanmar. He shares his experiences here:

Scott McGill
SavetheChildren.org
Asia Regional HIV/AIDS Adviser

Working in a disaster, you need to recalibrate your expectations and loosen up your locus of control — and do it fast if you are to healthily adapt to existing within certain limitations, including handling quite a few "no's".  But these past few days it has been much harder.

Managing the frustration of dealing with obstacles, tolerating the helplessness, telling yourself you are doing as much as you can while being painfully aware that there is so much more to be done.  I see it in the faces of my colleagues every day.  When I told some of them what my blog would be about this evening, they nodded in understanding and with similar tired but encouraging smiles.

Then as I sat down to write, I felt that it was much more pressing for me to talk about the people here facing even greater obstacles and challenge and somehow ingeniously rising above them.  For absolutely certain, this catastrophe is a very tall order in resilience and recovery.  Cyclone Nargis has eviscerated a densely populated part of the country and left barely told horror, vast swathes of misery and a depressingly long trajectory for recovery, which we are all in the development and aid community are only just beginning to come to grips with.

Land that may not be arable for many planting seasons to come, deadly fouled water sources, close-knit fishing villages wrenched apart, sole survivors of extended families of 30 people.  I cannot begin to imagine how survivors and their communities even begin to put it back together.

But if my local colleagues are anything to go by, then there is hope.  Throughout this whole response — despite their own homes being damaged by the storm here in Yangon; their worries about families and friends; their challenges with getting enough power to pump water into tanks, with navigating spiraling prices for simply the basics, and with getting to work despite (a) massive hikes in transport costs, (b) roads jammed with fallen trees and debris — they have been dedicated to accepting only a “Yes.”

Yes, we can corral trucks and drivers, boats and motorbikes to get the distributions out to where they are needed. Yes, we can go into affected townships, partner effectively and respectfully with their community leaders, locate the suppliers, buy up as much as we can and get that to those who need it most.  Yes, we can ensure children separated from their families are kept safe and that, in such turmoil, keep all children protected from any further harm and help them to begin recovering from the trauma of the last week.

There is so much being done and the work has only begun.  Yes, my local colleagues may be “long-suffering,” as so much of the media routinely describes them, but they are so much more than that.  I am learning from them where to channel that anger and those frustrations and keep focused on what I can do and not on what others tell me I cannot.

Editor's note: Save the Children is the leading independent organization creating lasting change for children in need in the United States and around the world. Scott McGill works for the organization and is currently helping with aid for the victims of Myanmar. He shares his experiences here:

Children help out clearing debris from under the monastery May 10, 2008 in the village of Kyaun Da Min a few hours south of Pyapon, Myanmar.

Scott McGill
Save the Children.org
Asia Regional HIV/AIDS Advisor

Life is trying to return to normal here in Yangon. Although petrol lines still meander down the street and drivers stand around waiting them out (chatting and puffing on green cheroots), the rotting debris of fallen leaves and branches and other evidence of the damage inflicted on the town is slowly swept up and trucked off.

The Yangon streets — once dominated by canopies of leafy, gnarled elderly mango trees — have been transformed permanently. It is almost disorienting to suddenly turn a corner and see buildings once hidden suddenly stripped of all greenery. We are still nervously dodging fallen or dangling power cables propped up by hastily fashioned bamboo struts, hoping that everything is tied up and somehow restrung before someone does, in fact, turn the power on. Generators chug and hum across the city. Somehow, we still seem to be able to get a continuous supply of diesel (however, prices remain beyond the reach of most people who club together to pay $15 for a generator per the hour to pump water into their apartment block tanks).

We contributed $20 today as our share on our street to re-erect power poles and reconnect the spaghetti mess of snapped and tangled cables. Our house guard and his friends climbed up a ladder and reconnected our telephone line and, for a few days, we had crystal clear, uninterrupted international calls accessed on the first dialing, but this has frustratingly gone for some reason.

It does not seem that it has been just over a week since we were wading through waist-high water from our house to the next-door plot of land to check on a family of five living in a one-room cabin where, though raised off the ground, water was beginning to lap around the wooden door. Such was the inundation from a relentless seven hours of rains accompanying Cyclone Nargis.

We helped them wade back to the house to get some shelter, dry out and eat some hot food. We were the lucky house on our street: Despite a flayed and flooded garden and the odd toppled tree, our roof remained intact and our generator at the time it hit was fully stocked with diesel. We spent Saturday as the storm subsided setting up the laptop with Disney DVDs for kids next door and a fried rice and hot tea, “soup kitchen” feeding our neighbors who, in turn, helped us move the fallen trees so that we could get some access in and out of the house while mopping up water with as many towels as we could find. Somehow our satellite TV reception remained on throughout the storm apart from the odd flicker, and we have kept our eye on the steady stream of cable news reporting what developed so slowly from a breaking news item to a story of catastrophic proportions headlining day after day as the situation unfolded.

And that is kind of what I have been assigned to doing as we all in the Myanmar office assumed different roles from our “day jobs.” (I am usually the Asia Regional HIV/AIDS Adviser for Save the Children). I am trying to keep track of the media coverage from “over there” — ensuring that our daily situation updates about which affected areas we have reached, what we have managed to achieve despite all the obstacles (e.g., distribution of food and other commodities — is all fed through to our regional office in Bangkok, which in turn updates our head offices and the media. This is easier said than done with our Internet access still beyond reach, so I hop in one of our office cars down to the World Food Program office where they have not just high-speed Internet but wireless! A few other NGO staff members duck into the office and also hook on to send their own updates and reports, answer urgent demands for information as well as simply try and steal a few minutes to send quick notes to family and friends to assure them that they are OK and not to worry.

In addition I am also working with the team to try to get the stories out to the wider world — especially communicating the voices of children who are so often most overlooked but yet most affected in disasters. Our teams have been talking to children and their parents about what happened to them and their circumstances now as they conduct distributions. Initially in the Yangon townships, we heard very similar stories of extremely scared children describing their corrugated iron roof being torn off their homes, huddling together with mother and siblings as the seemingly endless rain and wind chilled them to the core and destroying what little they had, and flimsy houses eventually collapsing. However even though their homes are now overcrowded, increasingly squalid schools doubling as shelters dependent on handouts, their families are at least largely intact if not exactly hopeful about their future.

Now as our teams reach the Delta region we are reading stories and also seeing photos from our teams that reflect — if it were possible — an even darker and grimmer scenario. Children separated from their families, crowded shelters, injuries sustained from flying debris and fallen trees as well as infected wind burn from the sheer speed and slow lumbering movement of the cyclone system as it inched over the delta to slam into us in Yangon.

As one of the media contact points, the other day a young man was hurriedly pointed in my direction. He had come from the Delta region and had photos to show us. Slightly distracted by the progress report I was writing to our regional office — trying to make their deadline, describing outcomes of meetings and the latest twists and turns in our efforts to respond adequately and as quickly as possible — I took his camera and started scrolling through the images. The small digital screen did not help, but initially I thought I was looking at five children of various ages no more than 6 years old, sleeping in orderly rows. Sickened I suddenly realized that these images were in fact some of the youngest victims of Nargis. Up to that point I think I had been keeping the thought of what could have happened to those out in the Delta as the days passed far from my mind, focusing on what we were doing from our office in Yangon. But this image brought it all joltingly clear and the images stayed with me all weekend.

Other photos came in today. Finally shots of our fantastic national staff who have been quietly working in such a skilfull way with local authorities, communities. They are ingeniously hiring boats, procuring rice from local suppliers, working through the night to get to stricken isolated areas. These pictures do not show them center frame, magnanimously handing out food and other essentials to grateful recipients — rather they show them sitting in small groups discussing with the local elders, senior monks and other community leaders, engaging those most affected and most knowledgeable, asking what they need and getting them to guide our efforts as to what is required, in what quantities and where. Planning, coordinating, and by no means undermining their authority, experience and leadership, but working together. And with that I need to head home and eat before the generator is retired for the night.

How you can help...

Editor’s note: World Vision is a Christian-based humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide. Laura Cusumano Blank works for the organization and is currently helping with aid for the victims of Myanmar. She shares her experiences here:

Laura Cusumano Blank
World Vision emergency communications officer
www.worldvision.org

I guess when you work in disaster relief, it always seems like the world is ending. Moving from one disaster to the next leaves little room to pay attention to the latest news back home.

First, a cyclone hit Myanmar and left tens of thousands of people dead – and countless more missing.

Children became orphans, fathers lost their sons, grandmothers became parents to their grandchildren. If that wasn't enough, two days ago, an earthquake hit China, and the rising death toll is now competing with the number of dead in Myanmar.

Add to all of that the recent weather reports about a tropical storm developing off the coast of Myanmar with the potential for a cyclone to form within the next 24 hours.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Yesterday, the World Vision office in Bangkok had a power outage – no email, no land lines, no air conditioning, no lights. Can anything else happen here?

How you can help...

Editor’s note: World Vision is a Christian-based humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide. Some of the aid workers dispatched to the region share their experiences helping the victims of the Myanmar Cyclone. Because of the inherent danger in Myanmar, World Vision is witholding their names.

From World Vision aid worker
www.worldvision.org

"I've met people who walked for days to get to Yangon from the Delta. They told stories of sleeping on the roadside, of bloated corpses floating on swollen rivers and of bodies strewn across the road. It had been days since they’ve had clean water to drink...

The travelers on foot told me about a 12-foot tidal wave that wiped out an entire village after hours of intense wind and rain...Disaster preparedness would have saved lives. World Vision deployed staff members to northern communities where the cyclone was first predicted to make landfall.

We were working with communities to prepare them for strong winds and heavy rain. Then the storm suddenly changed directions and headed south...

The people in this area had to escape by sea in small boats. I am told many drowned, unable to move through the violent waves fast enough...Many of us did not prepare our selves for the possibility that this storm could ruin our homes and steal innocent lives...The shock of losing loved ones, crops, livestock and homes can be deep and lasting.

I wonder if this will make people afraid to stay, afraid to sit with the ghosts of their loved ones and the fear that this might someday happen again."

How you can help

Editor’s note: World Vision is a Christian-based humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide. Laura Cusumano Blank works for the organization. Here is how she found out she would be traveling to the region to help the victims:

Waiting to receive aid

Laura Cusumano Blank
World Vision emergency communications officer
www.worldvision.org

Last Wednesday morning began with a 7:15 a.m. wake up call and the question – "How quickly can you get on a plane out of JFK to Bangkok?" I pulled my suitcase out of the closet, grabbed my passport, and started throwing some clothes into my bag. Jeans, boots, t-shirts, granola bars.

Within an hour, my boss called back. My ticket had been booked – with no return date – for the next flight leaving for Bangkok. I would be meeting up with a team of communications staff from around the world – Laos, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada – to help coordinate World Vision's media response to the cyclone in Myanmar.

17 hours later, I found myself in the middle of Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, exhausted but eager to get started. I had traveled to Bangkok two years ago for vacation, but I never thought I would get the chance to return – and certainly not under these circumstances. Our office, on the 13th floor of a downtown high-rise, has a wall of windows that overlook the city. The sun would set and rise again before I got to sleep that first day.

In my first three days in Bangkok, I slept just 9 hours – and worked 63 hours. Tonight, I'm hoping to get at least 6 before coming back to work. The work is constant and draining – but exhilarating, too. From the moment I landed, I felt like I had been made for this job. My background as a journalist and my interest in humanitarian work had led me to World Vision, and World Vision led me to Bangkok. I know I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

How you can help

David Reisner
360° Digital Producer

A U.S. diplomat says the Myanmar cyclone death-toll may top 100,000…

It’s hard to fathom just how many people 100,000 really amounts to.
How do we take in the death of that many people at once?

Here's one way to look at it: Imagine any one of these U.S. cities disappearing - overnight.
That drives it home for me, what about for you?

U.S. CITIES WITH POPULATION AROUND 100,000

• Berkeley, California
• Burbank, California
• Waterbury, Connecticut
• Pompano Beach, Florida
• Athens-Clarke County, Georgia
• Savannah, Georgia
• Springfield, Illinois
• Cedar Rapids, Iowa
• Topeka, Kansas
• Lafayette, Louisiana
• Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Ann Arbor, Michigan
• Manchester, New Hampshire
• Elizabeth, New Jersey
• Fayetteville, North Carolina
• Norman, Oklahoma
• Allentown, Pennsylvania
• Charleston, South Carolina
• Beaumont, Texas
• Waco, Texas
• Portsmouth, Virginia
• Bellevue, Washington
• Green Bay, Wisconsin

Source: U.S. Census Bureau 2006

Cyclone affected families waiting for the relief goods outside their destroyed homes.

Anderson Cooper

The numbers are shocking. 10,000 dead. Then yesterday 50,000. Now a top U.S. diplomat inside Burma suggests the death toll could be as high as 100,000. The truth is we don’t know. We may never fully know.

We’ve heard reports of bodies being dumped into rivers. We’ve seen this before. In Rwanda in 1994 I stood on a bridge over a river and saw dozens of bodies float downstream. They would collect at the base of a waterfall, caught in the swirling water, terribly bloated. I can still smell them. How many people in Burma will simply disappear?

What has happened in Burma is a natural disaster, but what is happening now is a man-made outrage. The government of Burma has been slow to allow aid groups in. I have been trying to get a visa for days now, but have not been granted one yet.

It is frustrating, to say the least. It’s important for journalists to be allowed in to convey the true scale of the catastrophe. It’s even more important that international aid groups be granted immediate access to the hardest hit areas.

CNN has a correspondent in Burma who is working around the clock to get information out. He is doing a great job. Many of us here at CNN wish we could join him. It is not for lack of trying.

Burma has seen so much suffering, so much pain, but what’s happening now should not be about politics or positions. It should be about getting aid to those in need, and preventing the spread of disease. We will be bringing you the latest from Burma tonight, in addition to the latest on politics here in the US.

100,000 dead. 50,000. 10,000. Their stories deserve to be told.

Power lines are down in Yangon after the cyclone struck Myanmar in a photo from iReport contributor Erik Hetrick

Eyewitness reports on the devastation and suffering left in the wake of Tropical Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar trickled out Wednesday by way of Web sites and blogs.

"This is indeed a very sad moment for all Myanmar people," blogger Myat Thura wrote from neighboring Thailand.

More than 22,000 people have died, according to estimates from Myanmar's state-run media. Another 40,000 are believed to be missing, according to the estimates, and 1 million have been left homeless since the storm hit last weekend in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.

"They are my people and it hurts me so much. Why our Burmese people have to suffer such kind of hardship? Why us?" Myat Thura wrote.

Another blogger, who calls herself May Burma, blamed the storm's devastation on corruption and dissipation in Myanmar society.

"Burmese used to say that our country never had natural disaster since we have our religion, culture and so many arhats [spiritual practitioners], pure monks and sayadaws [senior monks]. This is not the case anymore lately," she wrote.

A blogger called Rule of Lords claimed to translate reports from Thai television station Yoma 3 into English.

According to Rule of Lords, the station quoted eyewitnesses who said refugees were pouring into Laputta, even though the storm flattened the city of 50,000

Read more here:

This report includes graphic content - Viewer discretion is advised - CNN's Dan Rivers travels to Bogalay, Myanmar for a first-hand account of the devastation in the wake of Cyclone Nargis.

Hey bloggers,

Just wanted to update you on the latest on the killer Cyclone (Cyclone Nargis) that ripped through Myanmar’s low-lying delta region a few days ago. The biggest problem now is getting aid into the country. Most of the aid workers are stuck in Thailand, waiting to cross into Myanmar… Political red-tape is hindering several nations from getting on the ground and providing resources to the victims.

The death toll in Myanmar is staggering: its military government says more than 22,000 people died. Aid agencies are trying to get food and medical supplies to the stranded survivors, which include a million without homes. Those that have survived have shared their harrowing tales of survival and talk of living in the storm’s aftermath…

Here are some firsthand accounts from victims we’ve spoken with in Myanmar:

Witness: “All people I saw are crying so much and searching for the bodies of loved ones. There is bad smell from the dead bodies on the way we came.”
Reporter: “The Dead bodies have not yet been removed? “ Witness:”There are bodies where they have not yet searched. We found about 40 dead bodies on this way. A group of cows and buffalos are among victims. “
Reporter: “Are the dead bodies are floating in the water?"
Witness: "Everywhere… In the bushes, and in the streams. Everywhere..."

Witness: “The tide came up. Trees fell on people. There are many dead bodies lying under trees. Now many people do not have home to live in.
Reporter: “How many people died?”
Witness: ”I found so many dead bodies on the way, and so many animals that were terribly killed. A large group in each location.
Reporter: “Many children died? “
Witness: “Not just children, also adults, elderly ones, all.”
Reporter: “All the villagers died? Only 6 are left alive in the entire village.”

Witness: “The tide comes up with the storm. So people came out from their homes and tried to sleep on the road. I think there may be more than 1,000 people sleeping on the road.”
Reporter: "Are there any homes left?”
Witness:  "No homes are left. People are now searching for the bodies of their family members. Many families lost love ones, 3, 5, etc. We are so lucky that we survived. We left all our property and brought nothing with us when escaped. We escaped at night”

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- David Reisner, 360° Digital Producer