Tom's brother, former staff.
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Joined on 12/15/99
Posted by WadeFulp - May 8th, 2008
A powerful cyclone hit Myanmar, formerly Burma, and has left tens of thousands dead and missing. Many more may die in the aftermath due to disease, dirty drinking water, etc. Aid has been slow to get to those in need, supposedly due to the Myanmar government. I don't know if we have any fans in this part of the world, or if other areas were impacted by this storm. Hopefully aid will reach those who need it before it is too later. The storm hit with wind speeds of 120-150 MPH.
what? :|
apparently cyclones can be easily warned against up to 48 hours before they hit. The military government is afraid that if foreign aid gets in, their corruption and poor human rights will be brought to light for all the world to see, and they are really only making that worse by making it hard for aid to get into the country.
I think I heard it on the news a little while ago. I was surprised with the number of deaths.
Wow, that's one whopper of a storm. Our nation needs to be more concerned with what goes on in the world, not just events that happen in the US, or neighboring countries. I'm a little embarrassed this is the first time I've heard about this.
Although it does seem that Dubbya is making an attempt to help them, but their military doesn't want us to help. America as usual tries to step in and be the world policesdfd... ha, as I was typing this, word just spread around the office as my coworker just came back from lunch and heard about it... I guess today is the "America finds out about the cyclone" day... how many days late?
Anyways I'm no good at expressing political thoughts and views, so I'll just shut up and link to this video:
<a href="http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=81800&videoChannel=1">http://www.reuters.com/news/video?vid eoId=81800&videoChannel=1</a>
It's really lame how the US has a carrier group in the area that was conducting an aid relief excercise, and had all of the supplies ready to go even before the cyclone hit, and yet the idiot generals are far too scared shitless of losing power to let the US send aid in.
woah i fell sorry for the people who always get this kind of weather
I live in Thailand and we're next to Burma. I've just heard the news recently as well. I'm not sure anyone knows this yet but allthough the media from the military junta in Burma claims the death toll is at around twenty thousands the report from AFP says that the toll is actually up to eighty thousands or more.
I'm hearing there are rumors the death toll is already past 100,000, meaning by the time aid gets to these people it could be even higher.
I suspect these people had no warning from their government, and have yet to receive any help from their government. It's a bad situation, and that people in charge of the government there should hang.
The fact that many of us are just hearing about this now is probably an indication that the government there didn't warn their people, didn't ask for help, and didn't report the situation to anyone and the story had to leak out through other outlets.
This is why I don't watch the news anymore... They only report tragedies.
Although this reminds me of a massive earthquake that hit Turkey a while back. Myanmar should be much better off than them, because I think Myanmar actually has allies and foreign relations. Hopefully they are able to clear out the dead before the airborne diseases start to spread... thats what hurt Turkey the most I think.
Also, as far as global warming goes, this year was record snowfall and snow pack in most places around the US. Also Al Gore did NOT win the nobel peace prize, the 40 or so scientists he represents won the peace prize. Al Gore had nothing to do with it.
The govenment is condemning it's own people...
That is terrible.
This was all over the papers today. Apparently, the Burmese leader is only giving $250,000 in aid to help his own people, whereas a few years ago he spent 25 MILLION on his daughter's wedding. Crazy =/
Maybe he wants these people to die, less for him to worry about... I doubt he'll be in a position of power for long. If his own people don't take him out, the rest of the world might.
I'm pretty sure they're going to get worse. Not just Mayanmar, but worldwide.
I hope most of the people missing make it long enough to hold out and join their families. But I guess it's just wishful thinking...
How come I wasnt told about this :o
I saw it on TV a couple of times, and the situation is awful. Some news channels say that there can be more than 50.000 people dead/missing.
It's unbelievable. Even their geography changed, the country "shrunk" in it's size due to the cyclone. I can't believe things like that are possible...
Well, let's hope that they accept international help. Brazil mentioned something about sending people to help them.
When powerful storms, cyclones, hurricanes (same thing), hit land they can often alter the coast line. In this situation the storm pushed water up into the delta causing a storm surge, which may have been massive, which washed inland, churned up the coast, and probably swept thousands of people away. The #1 cause of death was probably storm surge, followed by inland flooding and wind damage.
This isn't sounding good:
<a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1143691.ece">http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/
news/article1143691.ece</a>
That is quite the storm.
I've been talking about it with my class. We read about hurricanes, then went to weather websites and looked at sattelite images.
I'm SO not ready for hurricane season here.
At least we have plenty of warning and can get out of the way or to a shelter. Shame more people didn't get out of New Orleans before Katrina hit. I think a lot of that was the stupidity of the people and the local government not getting out of there, and not providing enough means for the people to get out.
How horrible. What sucks even more, the government doesn't even help.
So, I guess all government everywhere is piss-crazy. It's a terrible thing when this stuff happens. Does the government even realize what help we can do if we send troops over there? Look what happened to New Orleans, sure hundreds died, but hundreds more might've died, had it not been for us. Why can't the government just take their asses out of their ears and realize what is happening to their people and let us in? D:
My god, that's terrible! I send my love to Myanmar...
Yale
Yeah this was pretty bad, I hope the help they are getting now will maybe make things a little better for the people living there. Also though it pisses me off that Al Gore says this is a result from global warming. I mean any bad thing that happens now gets turned into an effect of global warming.
WadeFulp
Figures Al Gore would use something like this to blame Global Warming and sell more of his books and DVDs. Much more powerful storms then this existed in the early 1900's before we were massively burning fossil fuels, etc. So me a cyclone with 250-300MPH winds, something much higher than anything on record, and then maybe he'd have something to go on, but even then we don't know how powerful these storms were pre 1900's because we don't have accurate weather data going back that far.