Word: road
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...Bogalay, a town of more than 50,000 people, is a five-to six-hour journey by car or motorbike from the old capital of Rangoon. The road passes through a shattered landscape. The 120 m.p.h winds uprooted trees, snapped concrete poles carrying power lines, and blew the tops off the golden pagodas. Structures of brick and concrete are missing their roofs. Houses of wood or straw are all but destroyed. In stricken delta towns like Kungyangon, Dedaye and Pyapon, almost every structure is damaged, many beyond repair. In Bogalay itself, no building is untouched. The streets are flanked...
...Burma's government originally estimated the cyclone killed 10,000 people in Bogolay and the surrounding area, but I saw no dead bodies on the road to the city or in Bogalay itself. I saw no funerals. While the place is in tatters, the death toll may be greater in more exposed villages closer to the sea. Bogalay is slightly inland; the majority of deaths occurred in more flimsy coastal villages fully exposed to the elements and unprotected from a 12-foot-high surge of water...
...counted more than 30 government or army trucks plying the road, all apparently empty, and perhaps a dozen trucks carrying wood meant for house-building. There was one small group of soldiers trying to clear away the fallen power lines, another helping locals bury a decomposing water buffalo, apparently drowned by the same 12-feet-tall surge of water that claimed so many human victims...
...Although narrow and in places rutted, the road to Bogalay is passable. So where is the aid? The junta wants foreign supplies, but not more aid workers. The junta has delayed issuing visas to foreign aid officials. Latest reports suggest the junta will start rejecting them outright...
...people of the delta fend for themselves. Farming families dry their recently harvested rice on nets spread out on the Bogalay road, and hang their damp clothes on the dead power lines. In the Bogalay area, the harvest was almost complete when Nargis struck, although much of it now lies unhusked in cyclone-crippled rice mills...