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19-05-2023
NAYPYIDAW: On Saturday, as “extremely severe” Cyclone Mocha gathered speed in the Indian Ocean and tracked a straight course for Myanmar’s northwestern Rakhine coast, Hla Tun made a critical decision.
While the vast majority of the residents of the seaside city of Sittwe, including his wife and daughter, headed inland or to higher ground, he instead taped up his windows, stocked up on food, and braced for the cyclone along with 11 neighbors who had taken shelter in his home.
“If I stay here, maybe I can save some people if the flooding or something serious happens,” he told media to explain his decision.
Less than 5 kilometres (3 miles) away, in a camp where ethnic Rohingya have been confined since fleeing clashes with the state’s majority Rakhine population in 2012, Si Thu also considered his options.
His low-lying camp, overcrowded with bamboo shelters, was unlikely to withstand heavy wind and flooding, so he and his family decided to go and stay with relatives in the nearby Rohingya village of Thae Chaung.
The next day at about noon, Cyclone Mocha swept across the Rakhine coast with wind speeds of up to 250kmph (155mph). Five hours later, it had left what the United Nations described as a “trail of devastation” in its wake, particularly in Sittwe.
“It is like a broken city,” said Hla Tun, who estimated that 95 percent of the houses in the Rakhine state capital had been damaged.
Setting out on his motorbike for the town of Kyauktaw, 100km (62 miles) inland, to find his family, he encountered collapsed bridges, destroyed farms and homes, and the body of a drowned Rohingya woman washed up in a pile of mud and debris.
He worried not only about the immediate days ahead but about how communities would survive the coming year.
“Many vulnerable households will not be able to build their houses again,” he said. “This is the farming season, but it is gone.” (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
