Volunteers rush to help as Myanmar flood toll surges

Volunteers rushed to areas inundated by floods in Myanmar yesterday as the country’s death toll from the Typhoon Yagi deluge surged to 113 and remote areas reported increasing numbers of dead and missing.
Floods and landslides have killed more than 400 people in Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in the wake of Typhoon Yagi, which hit the region last weekend, according to official figures.
However, with roads and bridges damaged in Myanmar and phone and Internet lines down, information has been limited. One man said how he had tried to rescue people with ropes as floodwaters 15 feet high surged through the hill town of Kalaw in Shan state on September 10.
“The current was very strong and even some buildings were destroyed,” he said, describing pieces of furniture being washed through the streets.
“I could see trapped families in the distance standing on the roofs of their houses,” said the man, who works for a local non-governmental group.
“I heard there were 40 bodies in the hospital,” he said.
A businesswoman in Yangon who runs a company in Kalaw said her staff there had reported nearly 60 people had been killed in the town. The junta said yesterday the death toll had jumped to 113 by Saturday night. The previous toll had been put at 74.
It did not specify whether any of those confirmed dead had been killed in Kalaw.
More than 320,000 people had been displaced and moved to “temporary relief camps”, junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said.
At Inle Lake, a tourist hotspot about 30kms from Kalaw, flood levels had risen on Saturday to the second storey of houses built on stilts above the water, according to one man there helping to evacuate his family.
“Whole villages have been submerged” in some areas near the lake, he said yesterday, asking to remain anonymous.