Cyclone death toll tops 22,000 in Myanmar
Bush offers help as worst Asian storm since 1991 leaves 1 million homeless.

YANGON, Myanmar - The cyclone death toll soared above 22,000 on Tuesday and more than 41,000 others were missing as the international community prepared to rush in aid after Asia's deadliest storm since 1991, state radio reported.
Up to 1 million people may be homeless after Cyclone Nargis, some villages have been almost totally eradicated and vast rice-growing areas are wiped out, the World Food Program said.
Some aid agencies reported their assessment teams had reached some areas of the largely isolated region but said getting in supplies and large numbers of aid workers would be difficult.

Images from state television showed large trees and electricity poles sprawled across roads and roofless houses ringed by large sheets of water in the Irrawaddy River delta region, which is regarded as Myanmar's rice bowl.
"From the reports we are getting, entire villages have been flattened and the final death toll may be huge," Mac Pieczowski, who heads the International Organization for Migration office in Yangon, said in a statement.
Based on a satellite map made available by the United Nations, the storm's damage was concentrated over about a 11,600-square mile area along the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Martaban coastlines — less than 5 percent of the country.
But the affected region is home to nearly a quarter of Myanmar's 57 million people.

Bush offers assistance
President Bush urged Myanmar's military rulers on Tuesday to accept U.S. disaster response teams that so far have been kept out and said the United States stood ready to "do a lot more" to help.
"The military junta must allow our disaster assessment teams into the country," Bush told reporters. He said he was prepared to make U.S. naval assets available to help in search and rescue efforts.
Shari Villarosa, the top American diplomat in Yangon, told NBC's Today show that the cyclone had knocked huge trees in the country's largest city.
"And it blew down a significant portion of them, some of these are six, eight, 10 stories tall — huge trees, 6 feet, 5 feet in diameter. So they came down on roofs," she said.

Storm surge
The cyclone triggered a massive storm surge that swept inland and left victims with nowhere to run, killing at least 10,000 people in one town alone.
"More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself," Minister for Relief and Resettlement Maung Maung Swe told a news conference in the devastated former capital, Yangon, where food and water supplies are running low.
"The wave was up to 12 feet high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages," he said. "They did not have anywhere to flee."

Story continued at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24478247?GT1=43001


Truly sad.