The first thing that struck him when he climbed off the commercial flight in the Burmese former capital of Rangoon on May 16, two weeks after the devastation of Cyclone Nargis, was the disquieting calm on the airfield.

A UNICEF emergency officer, Michael Bociurkiw was among the first Canadians permitted entry into the hermitic Southeast Asian realm. While the disaster zone veteran had worked on such crises as the 2005 Pakistan earthquake that killed as many as 80,000 people, this scene was different from the others Bociurkiw had seen.

“I have worked in other disaster zones, and one would expect at that stage of an emergency that aircraft and supplies would be all over the place,” he said in an interview two weeks ago. “But it was eerily quiet.”

When he finally arrived at his hotel later in the day, he climbed to the roof to get his first bird’s eye view of the destruction.

“From the hotel you could see the extent of the devastation, a lot of roofs missing from schools, hospitals and private homes,” Mr. Bociurkiw recalled. “Yangon is a beautiful city with huge old trees, and a lot of those are now gone. Toppled.”

But he would soon discover first hand that the damage in Rangoon was nothing compared to the devastation the cyclone had wreaked upon the country’s rural areas, especially the low-lying Irrawaddy Delta area.

During the storm, which made landfall on May 2, a tidal surge pushed seawater as far as 12 kilometers inland, through an area mere feet above sea level. The deluge contaminated rice paddies with salt, washed away embankments, and destroyed already rudimentary roads.

Flying over the Burmese countryside in a rented Ukrainian helicopter, at times through pelting monsoon rain, Mr. Bociurkiw could see the true extent of the damage.

“In some places we couldn’t distinguish waterway from the fields,” he said. “In some cases the landscape has been completely changed.”

Boats, essential to the rural Burmese lifestyle for fishing and transportation, were “totally destroyed like matchsticks. Destroyed and shoved up on the banks like they were thrown there by one big hand.”

Another devastating loss was that of between 100,000 and 150,000 water buffalo, animals essential for transportation, the working of fields, and food.

But while these items will be replaced someday, much was lost forever, including as many as 150,000 lives, many of them children. The death toll was exacerbated by the Burmese government’s slow response in allowing humanitarian aid and workers like Mr. Bociurkiw into the country.

“Many fieldworkers were stunned to find that there are almost no children under five in many villages,” he said. “They were the most vulnerable, and a lot were swept away and killed. Drowned.”

Some were literally ripped from their parents’ clutching arms.

Wherever the helicopter passed over the countryside, Burmese survivors climbed trees and ornately decorated Buddhist pagodas waving flags and shocks of white linen in joyous or hopeless attempts to get some desperately needed aid.

Upon spotting a place to land, Mr. Bociurkiw said, the helicopters would touch down lightly, the engines would be kept whirring to prevent the wheels from getting stuck in the soft, muddy soil.

Doors would be flung open and men and women would stream from the jungles, weather worn and deathly thin. Once loaded with supplies or equipment, they would struggle through sopping rice paddy mud to carry tents, high nutrition biscuits, rudimentary building supplies and water purification tablets back to their families.

Recovery Progressing Slowly

Mr. Bociurkiw, in a phone interview with Embassy, said the Burmese government’s initial hesitation, as well as the challenges posed by primitive infrastructure, have significantly slowed the overall progress of relief efforts in the country.

It has now been over two months since the disaster and Mr. Bociurkiw said normally, efforts would be shifting from humanitarian assistance to reconstruction and rehabilitation.

Relief efforts in Burma, however, are still in the initial lifesaving phases, and Mr. Bociurkiw expects that to be the case for another four months before medium-term reconstruction begins.

Mr. Bociurkiw said the UN estimates that some 2.4 million Burmese were affected by the cyclone and its aftermath, and the effects are spread over an area roughly the size of New Brunswick.

Of those affected, he said, some 1.1 million victims have not been reached by the UN or its partners, and hundreds of thousands remain without access to safe, clean drinking water.

Mr. Bociurkiw said that international aid workers now enjoy “pretty much unfettered access” to disaster zones, and co-operation is now being facilitated by the so-called Tripartite Group—consisting of UN, Burmese and Association of Southeast Asian Nations officials.

Later this month, Mr. Bociurkiw said, the UN and ASEAN will release a joint assessment that should “give us a very, very clear picture of the extent of devastation and the state of health the people are in.”

Early indications, he said, are that some $9 billion in international aid will be required for heavy infrastructure reconstruction and to replace homes, boats, and livestock.

According to the Canadian International Development Agency, Canada has pledged $14 million for relief efforts to help the people of Burma. The Canadian government also pledged to match dollar-for-dollar all monies donated by the Canadian public. How much additional money this donation-matching scheme will yield is not yet known.

Efforts will also continue to repair Burma’s damaged health and education systems. Some 4,000 schools were destroyed or severely damaged, and there is a need to replace the teachers, clinicians and midwives killed in the storm.

Fortunately, Mr. Bociurkiw said, efforts to stop a second wave of death brought on by diseases, such as cholera or measles, and starvation have been largely successful. This he attributes to rapid immunization programs, the distribution of one million malaria bed nets, and the “incredible resilience of the people.”

During his time in Burma, Mr. Bociurkiw interacted with a number of Burmese officials, including the prime minister.

When asked what he thinks of the regime, he gave a studied reply.

“I think they’ve now realized that this is bigger than any one entity could ever handle,” he said. “Of course there was slowness at the beginning for access for both internationals and supplies, but I think after a while these confidence measures have taken hold and in our case, things are going rather smoothly compared to many weeks ago.”

jdavis@embassymag.ca