BAGO: Volunteers rushed to areas inundated by floods in Myanmar on Sunday as the country's death toll from the Typhoon Yagi deluge more than doubled and remote areas reported increasing numbers of dead and missing.
Floods and landslides have killed almost 350 people in Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in the wake of Typhoon Yagi, which hit the region last weekend, according to official figures.
One man said that he had tried to rescue people with ropes as floodwaters four metres high surged through the hill town of Kalaw in Shan state on September 10. A businesswoman in Yangon who runs a company in Kalaw said that her staff there had reported nearly 60 people had been killed in the town.
Myanmar's junta has not specified whether any of the 74 people it says have died from the floods were in Kalaw. Its previous death toll, released on Friday, was 33. At Inle Lake, a tourist hotspot about 30 kilometres away, flood levels had risen on Saturday to the second storey of houses built on stilts above the water.
Cars and trucks carrying volunteers were streaming north from the commercial hub Yangon to reach affected areas in Taungoo in the Bago region and around the capital Naypyidaw, reporters said. The vehicles were loaded with pallets of bottled water, bundles of clothes and dried food. Some had boats strapped to their roofs.
Residents of the Yado displacement camp in eastern Karen state were forced to flee their temporary homes after torrents of water ripped through the camp.
The deluge had left 74 dead and 89 people missing by Friday evening and more than 235,000 displaced. However, with roads and bridges damaged as well as phone and internet lines down, information has been limited.
The Sittaung and Bago rivers, which flow through central and southern Myanmar, were both still above dangerous levels, state media said, although water levels were expected to fall in the coming days. In the east, the Thanlwin river was more than two metres above its danger level. — AFP
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