More rain batters victims of Myanmar cyclone
Rising prices of the scarce goods needed for recovery create rising anger against profiteers and the military regime. A few U.N. relief flights are allowed in.
YANGON, MYANMAR — New rains lashed this capital as Myanmar's military junta was only beginning to allow in foreign aid, leaving residents to pay extortionate prices for bare essentials, bathe in the streets and stew in heavy rain pouring through holes in their roofs.
Exploiting shortages caused by damaged and destroyed roads and ports, profiteers have jacked up prices for everything from gasoline and rice to corrugated sheeting and the nails needed to attach them to damaged buildings.
Weary survivors struggling to recover from last weekend's catastrophic cyclone got a hint of the monsoon season to come as downpours drenched leaky homes and caused minor flooding in some streets.
"For the first two or three days, people were in shock. Now anger has set in," said a local resident working with authorities in an effort to organize privately donated aid. Like most people, he requested anonymity because the slightest hint of criticism risks the junta generals' wrath.
After 46 years of military rule, the generals are used to brushing off or suppressing discontent. But Cyclone Nargis delivered a hard blow to the junta's standing as well as to the rest of the country.
Neighboring India says it gave the government here two days' warning that a powerful cyclone was bearing down on Myanmar, also known as Burma. But residents of Yangon say officials only told them to expect winds of 40 mph. Instead, the storm hammered the southern region with 120-mph winds.
Five days later, a semblance of normalcy is returning to Yangon, the country's biggest city. More shops opened, but many remained shuttered, their owners fearful that growing despair will set off a wave of looting.
In the hardest-hit Irrawaddy River delta region, there are reports of fights over the little aid that has getting through.
The monsoon season, when heavy rain comes almost every day, will start in two to three weeks. Most homes left standing by the cyclone lost some or all of their roofs in the storm that hit late Friday and lasted long into Saturday.
But in central Yangon, building supply merchants have raised prices for corrugated metal sheets from $4 to $30, forcing many desperate people to take hundreds of dollars from meager savings just to stay dry.
Knowing that new roofing isn't much good without special, hook-topped nails to hammer them down securely, shops are charging an even higher markup for those, complained one resident.
