A Myanmar Cyclone Perspective from a Hurricane Katrina Survivor

The Myanmar Cyclone brings to mind the devastation wrought by Katrina. The death toll in Myanmar is beyond anything one can imagine. The Myanmar Cyclone had winds of 120 miles per hour and Katrina reached 140 to 150 miles per hour. The preparation for Hurricane Katrina kept the death toll to several hundred whereas the Myanmar Cyclone warnings were few and far between and people were not prepared for that terrific force of nature.

The homes in Myanmar are not built like the homes in Mississippi and the Mississippi homes were still destroyed. It is unfortunately easy to see how such devastation could occur from the Myanmar Cyclone in that very underdeveloped country. The first report I read hours after the Myanmar Cyclone in a Yahoo article online reported 10 deaths.

Now there are tens of thousands of deaths with the number rising. In Mississippi, we had help from many sources and the days that followed were still beyond anything I have ever experienced. In Myanmar, the people don't have the resources or infrastructure we had in Mississippi and the government is not allowing the full international aid to come into the country.

Those poor people who survived will take for ever to recover from the Myanmar Cyclone and we can only hope that the government allows the supplies to flow in. I truly can empathize with those poor people and they will need all the aid that the international community can provide. I found my first person narrative of the storm through the eyes of my wife and me in my computer files. My prayers go out to the people of Myanmar because their suffering is far worse than what I describe in the following narrative. We can thank God that we live in the USA and a disaster like the Myanmar Cyclone can make one realize how good we have it in America even when we have a natural disaster like Katrina.

Hurricane KATRINA - A Personal Experience

We stayed, we swam, and we survived!!!!