When Cyclone Nargis hit Yangon in the early hours of May 3 2008, the country’s foremost weather forecaster was enduring a sleepless night at home as the storm wreaked havoc on the city.
U Tun Lwin, who was then head of the Department of Meterology and Hydrology, says he had spent most of the previous week issuing desperate warnings to citizens on television and in the newspapers.
But the storm, the worst natural disaster ever recorded in Myanmar, swept through the Ayeyarwady Delta region and across the country, claiming the lives of more than 138,000 people.
In a new book, Nargis and I, U Tun Lwin responds to critics of his department, which was widely accused of failing to give adequate warnings to citizens.
“I have a responsibility to write this because I was the only man who knew everything about the storm,” he told Coconuts Yangon.
He first got word about Nargis from a Bangkok-based organisation on April 28, predicting a cyclone would hit the delta on the evening of May 2, he said.
“I was very worried because the Delta area is very fragile,” said U Tun Lwin.
“The vulnerability is very high, so if the storm struck the coast that would be disastrous – I knew it well in advance.
“I did everything. I did so many things. I gave warnings. I did my normal job but I gave more forecasts than ever.
“Then I contacted all the… big people and the departments and I even tried to contact with one very senior official and gave a warning.
“Everybody thinks that this was the fault of my department – actually it was not.”
So if it wasn’t the fault of the weather forecasters, whose was it?
Avoiding any outright criticism of the government, U Tun Lwin blamed three factors: low public education, poor resources in the worst affected areas and an insufficient emergency response.
The actions of the ruling military junta, who denied visas to experienced foreign aid workers in the wake of the storm, were widely condemned at the time and in books like Emma Larkin’s Everything is Broken.
“People never know what is really happening,” said U Tun Lwin.
“They need to know, otherwise they can’t improve the disaster management.”
U Tun Lwin’s Nargis and I has been donated to the non-profit Aung Foundation, who are distributing copies. It is priced at 3,000 kyats.
Photo: Mohd Nor Azmil Abdul Rahman/ Wikicommons
