This is such a horrible natural disaster, cyclone kills thousands and many, many still missing, 20 thousand plus are confirmed dead with over 40 thousand people missing and millions left homeless.For anyone who does not know what a cyclone is… its a hurricane that spins in the opposite direction. The difference between a cyclone and a hurricane is the direction in which the winds spin.

From the International Herald Tribune - The death toll from a powerful cyclone that struck Myanmar over the weekend rose to 22,500 on Tuesday, and foreign governments and aid organizations began mobilizing for a major relief operation.

The number was the latest in a steadily escalating official toll since Cyclone Nargis struck early Saturday, devastating much of the fertile Irrawaddy Delta and the nation’s major city, Yangon. At a news conference in Yangon, the minister for relief and resettlement, Maung Maung Swe, said 41,000 people were still missing from the cyclone, which triggered a surge of water inland from the sea.

“More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself,” the minister said, in the first official description of the destruction.

“The wave was up to 12 feet high,” or 3.6 meters, “and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages. They did not have anywhere to flee.”

A spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program said that as many as one million people might have lost their homes and that some villages had been almost totally destroyed. Read the rest of this entry »