| May 6, 2008 Death tolls soars past 22,000 in Myanmar
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(NECN/ABC) - The death toll in Myanmar is practically un-imaginable. The weekend cyclone killed at least twenty-thousand people and that number could rise.
Up to a million people are likely homeless, some villages virtually leveled and huge rice-growing areas wiped out.
Pkg script: With so much devastation and death in Myanmar once known as Burma, the question today for those who survived is how long they'll be able to hang on.
"The day before it was the city you knew, and the day after, it's like another planet."
The killer cyclone left thousands of people missing, even more are thought to be homeless.
In a rare move for one of the world's most repressive regimes, the military Junta accepted international help.
The first air shipment is scheduled to arrive from nearby Thailand. This includes a quarter of a million dollars from the U.S..
President Bush stated, "Military junta must allow into... message let us come help you.... your people."
Many of the cyclone's victims are in the countryside which was cut off by the storm that washed -away roads.
Richard Horsey from the UN, "So it's a question of identifying stockpiles of plastic sheeting, water purification tablets, and other items. Either within the country or in the region. And ensuring that they arrive as quickly as possible."
The people's resilience has been tested by 50 years of military rule. But a storm that destroyed so much, in a few hours, may
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