YANGON, Myanmar — International aid began to trickle into Myanmar on Tuesday, but the stricken Irrawaddy delta, the nation’s rice bowl where 22,000 people perished and twice as many are missing, remained cut off from the world.
In the former capital of Yangon, soldiers from the repressive military regime were out on the streets in large numbers for the first time since Cyclone Nargis hit over the weekend, helping to clear away rubble. Buddhist monks and Catholic nuns wielded axes and long knives to remove ancient, fallen trees that were once the city’s pride.
However, the coastal areas of the delta worst hit by the high winds and tidal surges were out of reach for aid workers, isolated by flooding and road damage.
Electricity remained cut off for nearly all 6.5 million residents of Yangon, while the water supply was restored in only a few areas. Some residents waited in lines for nine hours or more to buy gasoline to fuel generators and their cars. At one gas station in the Yangon suburb of Sanchaung, fistfights broke out, with weary residents hitting each other with sticks after someone tried to cut in line.
The U.N.’s World Food Program said international aid began to flow, with 800 tons of food getting through to the first of nearly 1 million people left homeless by the cyclone.
Concerns mounted over the lack of food, water and shelter in the delta region and adjacent Yangon, where nearly a quarter of Myanmar’s 57 million people live, as well as the spread of disease in a country with one of the world’s worst health systems.
“Our biggest fear is that the aftermath could be more lethal than the storm itself,” said Caryl Stern, who heads the U.N. Children’s Fund in the United States.
After days of little military presence in the streets, soldiers were out Tuesday clearing massive felled trees with power saws and axes and using their bare hands to lift debris into trucks.
State television played up the effort, showing images of a government truck distributing water, though residents said they hadn’t seen any water trucks around the city. There were no images of the hundreds of monks helping the recovery effort.
Based on a satellite map made available by the United Nations, the storm’s damage was concentrated over about an 11,600- square-mile area along the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Martaban coastlines — less than 5 percent of the country but home to nearly a quarter of the country’s population.
The White House said Tuesday the U.S. would send more than $3 million to help cyclone victims, following an initial emergency contribution of $250,000.
President Bush called on the junta to allow the United States to send in a disaster- assessment team, which he said would allow for quicker and larger aid infusions.
The Myanmar military, which regularly accuses the United States of trying to subvert the regime, is unlikely to allow a U.S. military presence in its territory.
But reflecting the seriousness of the crisis, the government has appealed for foreign aid and also announced Tuesday it is delaying a crucial constitutional referendum in the hardest-hit areas.
State radio said most of the 22,464 dead, as well as the 41,000 missing, were in the densely populated Irrawaddy delta, home to 6 million people. It said 671 were killed in the Yangon area. Brig. Gen. Kyaw San, the information minister, said most fatalities were caused by tidal waves.
