Yangon, Myanmar, the Category 3 cyclone, and a death toll of over 100,000

look at the escalation of the headlines...

More than 200 dead in Myanmar cyclone

Cyclone kills over 350 in Myanmar

Hundreds feared dead in Myanmar cyclone

Cyclone kills nearly 4000 in Myanmar: state TV

Myanmar: Death toll more than 15000

this morning...

US envoy: Myanmar deaths may top 100000

i've been watching al jazeera's coverage of the horrific disaster... when they post the video clip, i will get it up here as an update...

from ap...

Hungry people swarmed the few open shops and fistfights broke out over food and water in Myanmar's swamped Irrawaddy delta Wednesday as a top U.S. diplomat warned that the death toll from a devastating cyclone could top 100,000.

The minutes of a U.N. aid meeting obtained by The Associated Press, meanwhile, revealed the military junta's visa restrictions were hampering international relief efforts.

Only a handful of U.N. aid workers had been let into the impoverished Southeast Asian country, which the government has kept isolated for five decades to maintain its iron-fisted control. The U.S. and other countries rushed supplies to the region, but most of it was being held outside Myanmar while awaiting the junta's permission to deliver it.

Entire villages in the Irrawaddy delta were still submerged from Saturday's storm, and bloated corpses could be seen stuck in the mangroves. Some survivors stripped clothes off the dead. People wailed as they described the horror of the torrent swept ashore by the cyclone.

"I don't know what happened to my wife and young children," said Phan Maung, 55, who held onto a coconut tree until the water level dropped. By then his family was gone.

i have a terrible feeling that the 100,000 death toll is going to go much higher...

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Behold The Power Of Nature

NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, Goddard Space Flight Center.

Cyclone Gonu hammers Oman, heads for Iran

MUSCAT, Oman — A weakened Cyclone Gonu battered Oman's capital Wednesday with fierce winds and torrential rains, flooding streets, disrupting oil exports, shutting down air service and forcing thousands from their homes.

Oil traders tracked the course of the storm as it veered north toward Iran and the Strait of Hormuz — the world's most important crude oil tanker route.

The U.S. military's Joint Typhoon Warning Center predicted that the storm would make landfall on the southeastern Iranian coast late Thursday — but sparing Iran's offshore oil installations that lie more than 120 miles to the west.

But the storm could cause disruptions in oil shipments through the strait. About one-fifth of the world's oil passes through the narrow waterway at the southeastern entrance to the Persian Gulf.

Continued here...

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