Yangon is Ground Zero; there are no more big trees left: seinban, kokko, nyaung…

My house is now pinned under a big uprooted  kokko tree but nothing was damaged(not the car or the house)…but all big trees are gone…One of my big trees from my valley hit the corner of a neighbour’s 3-storey building…

The big kokko tree from the German Embassy crashed onto our lane; the karamek tree from neighbouring compound crashed the other way on our lane; the electric lamp post at the gate was cut about 4/5 of the way down…

I could only manage to go onto Kaba Aye Pagoda Road, climbing up the hill in the mud from my house up to Mya Yeik Nyo Hotel….

Kaba Aye pagoda compound is full of fallen trees; all roads were  blocked by fallen trees; the trees falling pulled the wires and the wires pulled the lamposts…

Mya Yeik Nyo new building is now roofless. ..There were around 12 electric poles lying horizontal to the road… Nga Dak Kyee Pagoda’s htidaw (crown/top) is gone…

Billboards are all down…satellite dishes were bent and blown away……

Parts of GVAC roof (the centrtal part) got blown off and all 3 storeys got flooded….they’ve lost quite a bit of their paintings

I could not get into Inya Road or Boundary Road or Bogyoke Ywa…

Army Battalion no. 11, 22 and 77 are clearing the big roads… Otherwise, it’s mostly kohtu kohta (self-help)…. Monks are leading the cleaning-up process in the residential areas…

No electricity means no water; a real crisis, and people don’t know whether to pray for rain (no roofs) or not for water… People are using water from Inya Lake….

Petrol was 10,000 kyats to the gallon yesterday (maybe less today, because the govt. petrol pumps  are selling petrol today)… Candles have gone up from 100 to 300 kyats for a medium-sized candle; chicken is 10,000 kyats  to the viss; eggs are 280 kyats  (100% increase); pebyoke (baked beans) is 400 kyats for 10 ticals (doubled price)…

Tin roofing has gone up from 5000 to 30,000 kyats…

General labourers are charging 7000 kyats per day just to drag logs away…

The big roads are usable today; should be better tomorrow … but the phone lines are still non-functional (even the GSM mobiles; CDMA radio phones are better)…

Rangoon has gone backwards 20 years…

Two towers at Mingaladon Airport were destroyed, so they dd not let any plane land in Rangoon. The flights on Sarurday were diverted to Mandalay….

The irony is that the newspapers of 3rd May said the wind speed would be only 40 mph and would hit only the outskirts of Yangon and that people were not to worry!!!

(Eye-witness account by someone who was stranded in Rangoon for a few days in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis )