YANGON, MYANMAR — New rains lashed this city Thursday as Myanmar's military government was only beginning to allow in foreign aid, leaving residents to pay exorbitant prices for bare essentials, bathe in the streets and stew in frustration.
Exploiting shortages caused by damaged roads and ports, profiteers have jacked up prices for supplies, including rice and corrugated sheeting and nails. Back-street gas dealers were charging at least $10 a gallon, more than double the $4-a-gallon cost before Tropical Cyclone Nargis struck.
Weary survivors struggling to recover from last weekend's catastrophic storm got a hint of the monsoon season to come as downpours drenched battered homes and caused new flooding in some streets. Torrential rain is forecast to return today. "For the first two or three days, people were in shock. Now anger has set in," said a local businessman working with authorities to organize privately donated aid here in the nation's largest city. Like most people, he requested anonymity because the slightest hint of criticism risks incurring the ruling generals' wrath.
After 46 years of military rule, the generals are used to brushing off discontent. But the cyclone delivered a hard blow to their standing as well as to the rest of the country just days before a scheduled vote on a draft constitution that critics say is a ruse to enshrine military rule.
Neighboring India says it gave the regime two days' warning that a powerful cyclone was bearing down on Myanmar, also known as Burma. But residents of Yangon say officials here told them to expect winds of 40 mph. Instead, the storm hammered the southern region with 120-mph winds. The official death count was about 22,000, with 41,000 people missing and 1,400 injured. Some aid and exile groups said the death toll might ultimately exceed 70,000 and could rise as high as 100,000.
Five days later, a semblance of normality was returning to Yangon, also known as Rangoon. More shops opened, but many remained shuttered, their owners fearful that growing despair would set off a wave of looting.
In the hardest-hit Irrawaddy River delta region, however, there were reports of fights over the scarce aid that has gotten through. A storm surge of seawater at least 12 feet high wiped out whole villages there, destroyed rice fields and left hundreds of thousands of people without shelter and with little or no food and clean water.
