Voices from Myanmar: How the cyclone first hit

The island was like a graveyard, he said; dark, still and ghostly.

It was the middle of the night, 48 hours after Cyclone Nargis slammed into Myanmar. Light from the approaching vessel revealed a fishing village in complete darkness. Boats had been tossed 500 yards inland while buildings lay splintered.

"There were no dead bodies," the man said. "The bodies had all floated away."

The man who gave this account had just arrived at Haing Gyi Island (pronounced Hine Gee), at the mouth of the Irrawaddy River's westernmost branch.

It is a land of mudflats, mangroves and swaying palm trees.

It is where Cyclone Nargis first struck land in Myanmar, also known as Burma, about midnight May 2. The storm went on to clear a path through the delta, killing up to 100,000 people, according to various estimates.

The man, a young Burmese professional from Yangon, was one of the first to visit the devastated island, roughly 160 miles southwest of the commercial capital. And he is the first to provide an account of how an unsuspecting fishing village was caught off guard by the country's worst natural disaster.

The man did not want to be identified for fear of retribution from Myanmar's repressive military government, which has tried to restrict coverage of the disaster, even banning cameras from aid workers. But he said his nickname, Zulu, could be used. He spoke by telephone from Yangon this week

The residents of Haing Gyi Island are used to storms, said Zulu, who met many of the survivors. They often pack 40 mile-an-hour winds, sometimes 80.

So when residents first learned by government-owned radio that another storm was brewing in the Bay of Bengal, they weren't worried. But this cyclone packed winds up to 120 miles per hour.

Soon the villagers could no longer stand. They tried running for shelter, but could only crawl.

Two hours later came the storm surge — a wall of water up to 10 feet high.

"After the water came in, they couldn't crawl anymore," Zulu said. "They had to swim."

They sought safety on a small hill on the island, but many of the elderly and infants were washed away, their bodies yet to be found.

Zulu estimated that 25 percent of the population, or more than 300, of Haing Gyi's four villages perished.

Many of the island's big trees, some of them more than a century old, were uprooted. Wells are contaminated with salty water. About 80 percent of the island's fishing boats were destroyed, according to a boat owner and fish merchant he met.

Nearly all of the villagers depended on the fishing industry. "There's no more fishing boats," Zulu said. "They don't know what to do."

The military government provided only four small cans of rice for each family, as well as a longyi — a kind of kilt that Burmese men and women traditionally wear — and a shirt.

How, wondered Zulu, can an entire family use one longyi and one shirt?

Zulu was in Pathein, Myanmar's fourth largest city, which is also in the delta, when the storm hit. The city was just far enough north to miss the brunt of the storm.

His wife and eight-month-old daughter, meanwhile, were back in Yangon, huddled on the bed, when the roof of their home was torn off. Floodwaters two feet high swamped the home, destroying Zulu's clothes and collection of rare books.

Others from Yangon provided similar accounts of the storm, a terrifying night of howling winds, breaking glass and lashing rains. It lasted about 12 hours. They woke up to what many described as a "battlefield."

"Every family has damage," a Burmese journalist said by telephone. "They lost their roofs or their belongings."

The city of old British colonial buildings and wide avenues also lost one of its key features — the grand old trees that shaded many of its sidewalks and outdoor tea shops. Yangon is one of the few major Asian cities that had not destroyed its greenery in the name of development. Now, roughly 75 percent of the trees are gone.

"I think you can't see Yangon's beauty when you come again to Myanmar," said Aye, a young Burmese woman, by e-mail.

While the price of food has roughly doubled, water supplies and electricity were returning to normal in many parts of the city, residents said.

But south and west of the former capital, where entire villages were virtually wiped out, the story is far different.

"The situation is bad," said a Burmese journalist who visited the region. Survivors need drinking water, food, shelter and medical aid. "They are only getting a small amount of rice within a week," he said.

Drinking water supplies were contaminated with salt water, while people were starting to suffer from diarrhea.

A reporter for a private weekly newspaper, called a "journal" in Myanmar, said aid was not reaching some villages in Day Da Ye township, a journey three hours by motorcycle and one hour by boat from Yangon.

International aid workers are desperately trying to get food, medicine and shelter into the area. But poor transportation and government restrictions have slowed the flow of supplies.

Long lines of survivors line the narrow road leading to Yangon, hoping for handouts of water, noodles or snacks from passing cars, the journalist said.

But some were too traumatized to do anything. The journalist encountered a young woman who lost five family members, including her mother, father and a baby. "She didn't speak anymore," the journalist said. "Her eyes were not moving."

The stench of dead buffaloes and cows was overwhelming. Even human bodies were left to the elements. "They are floating up and down the canals," the journalist said.

At night, it's not unusual for a corpse to run aground outside someone's home.

In the morning, he said, "They just put it back in the water."

Jeff Hodson is a former Seattle Times reporter who lives in Thailand