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Myanmar claims it issued cyclone forecast days before disaster
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 08 - 05 - 2008


Myanmar's Department of Meteorology claimed
Thursday to have issued warnings on the approach of Cyclone Nargis
six days before the storm struck the country, killing tens of
thousands of people, the World Meteorological Organization said, according to DPA.
"The Department of Meteorology and Hydrology (DMH) of Myanmar
started to issue forecasts on cyclone Nargis as of April 27," said a
statement issued in Geneva by the WMO.
Tun Lwin, permanent-secretary of the Myanmar Meteorological
Department, told the WMO it had issued forecasts of the cyclone as
early as April 27 and had warned "authorities" as of April 29th.
"A press briefing was given to national media on 1 May and
newspaper headlines on 2 May, the day of the landfall, focused on the
cyclone," said the WMO.
Yangon residents confirmed that cyclone warnings had appeared in
local newspapers three days before the event, but it is questionable
whether many of the victims in rural Myanmar had access to the news.
Myanmar's ruling junta has been heavily criticized, notably by
US first lady Laura Bush among others, for failing to issue proper
warnings to its people about the impending threat of the cyclone,
which was packing 200-kilometres-per-hour winds when it first hit
Myanmar's central coastline on May 2.
The WMO noted that Myanmar's meteorological department, which had
recently benefited from and upgrading of its Global
Telecommunications System, had received accurate information on the
cyclone from the WMO regional centre in New Delhi.
The cyclone has devastated the low-lying Irrawaddy Delta region,
the country's densely-populated rice bowl. The government has placed
the death toll at close to 23,000 with another 42,000 missing.
"Nargis was the first tropical cyclone making landfall in Myanmar
for 40 years," noted the WMO. "Such a rare hazard shows the need for
a multi-hazard approach to early warnings systems."


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