Everything Is Broken: A Tale of Catastrophe in Burma - Hardcover

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Part One
Skyful of Lies

May 2008

The soldiers are moving cautiously through the gardens of the ShwedagonPagoda. They walk in solemn groups of three. The trousers of their darkolive-green uniforms are rolled up around their knees and they are barefoot.They shuffle their feet methodically through the undergrowth, squelchingtheir toes into the mud and grass. Their heads are bowed in concentration,as if in prayer.

One

A few days after Cyclone Nargis made landfall at the southwestern tipof Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta on Friday, May 2, 2008, NASA releaseda set of before and after pictures taken by satellite.

In the image taken before the cyclone, the delta’s myriad waterwayswere perfectly etched upon the landscape, like dark and delicate veins.Toward the lower edges of the delta, in the coastal stretches, these veinsbroadened and merged into the inky blue waters of the Andaman Sea.Large swaths of vibrant green indicated fertile rice-growing land. Deforestedareas and urban centers, like Rangoon and its surrounding sprawlof slums, showed up as dun-colored patches. In the delta, towns such asLaputta and Bogale were barely visible amid the pastoral palette of greens,browns, and blues.

The satellite image taken shortly after the cyclone depicted a landscapethat had been changed dramatically. The fact that the area aroundRangoon was now a marbleized swirl of aquamarine suggested that itwas heavily flooded. The waterways of the delta, so distinct in the earlierimage, had become blurred and hazy. The blue of the Andaman watersshowed up as a luminescent turquoise color that had seeped onto theland, an indication that parts of the delta now lay underwater. Comparingthe two images it seemed as if a bucket of water had been sloshedacross an ink drawing; the carefully marked lines had been erased andthe paper beneath was buckled and distorted.

These images showed that Cyclone Nargis had altered the landscapesignificantly and caused substantial damage. Yet, in those first days afterthe cyclone, hardly any news emerged from Burma. The storm severedphone lines and electrical wires, and it was almost impossible to get informationfrom inside the country.

The cyclone had been brewing in the Bay of Bengal for almost a week.When the tropical depression developed into a cyclonic storm, the IndiaMeteorological Department named the storm “Nargis,” a moniker takenfrom a list of names provided annually by each of the countries in thecyclone band of the Indian Ocean (contributed by Pakistan, nargis is anUrdu word for the flower narcissus, which is more commonly known asthe daffodil). By the time Nargis reached the coast of Burma, it had growninto a category four storm with wind speeds of up to 135 miles per hour.Cyclones of this magnitude can trigger a storm surge that would be highenough to engulf a two-story house. The storm charted a path across theIrrawaddy Delta, the vast flood basin for Burma’s main river that is populatedwith hundreds of farming and fishing villages, and directly throughRangoon, the country’s largest city and former capital, before finally dissipatingin the mountains along the Thailand-Burma border. With thehelp of regional and international weather-monitoring services, this muchwas known.

What was not known was what had happened on the ground andwhat had become of all the millions of people who must have been inthe cyclone’s path.

Over the following week, news began to trickle out from Burma, asgenerators were activated and electricity and phone lines were restored tosome parts of Rangoon. Photographs of the city looked as if they hadbeen taken in the aftermath of a massive explosion. Roads were blockedby fallen trees. Cars had been crushed by logs and telephone poles. Cementwalls had caved in and pavements were cracked open. The destructionin the city was catastrophic, but it soon became apparent that whathad happened in Rangoon was nothing compared to the devastation ofthe Irrawaddy Delta. Toward the end of the week, an e-mail from Burmacirculated some photographs taken in the delta; these were among theearliest harrowing glimpses of what had happened there.

The first image was a picture of two dead girls. One girl wore shortsand a bright orange T-shirt printed with a cheerful floral pattern. Theother had on only a frilly pale green top. They lay on their backs in anest of sodden palm fronds with their eyes closed and their heads turnedaway from each other. They looked as if they had fallen, or been flung,from a very great height.

The next photograph showed seven bodies floating in water, perhapsa pond. One grouping looked like it could be a family—a woman withtwo children on either side of her. The children were faceup with theirarms flung out, as if reaching for their mother. The other figures couldbe seen only in parts: an exposed chest, a red T-shirt, a billowing bluelongyi, or sarong, beneath which a pair of legs disappeared into the still,brown-gray surface of the water.

The most gruesome photograph captured a row of bodies scatteredacross paddy fields. They were swollen and black from sun exposure.Rigor mortis had locked the bodies into crooked postures; their legs andarms were spread wide, and they lay entangled in grotesque and awkwardembraces.

Within just a couple of days, the Burmese regime announced on statetelevision that as many as 10,000 people could have been killed. The verynext day, an official death toll was released that was more than doublethat figure with over 22,400 people declared dead and more than 41,000people missing. The majority of these lives were lost across the deltaregion, with Rangoon reporting only a few deaths.

From these initial snatches of information, it was clear that CycloneNargis had been a disaster of epic proportions. In the delta, tens ofthousands of people were dead, and many hundreds of thousands musthave been trying to survive without food, water, or shelter. As...