Myanmar cyclone: Emergency response

Last week Saturday a destructive cyclone hit the Asian country Myanmar. As new information comes in daily, it now becomes clear that the cyclone had a devastating effect. Disease, hunger and thirst pose a major threat to hundreds of thousands of survivors.

Our colleagues in the area
It was very difficult to get information from our colleagues at the TNT agent in Myanmar, but fortunately this message came to us yesterday: Andrew Bawi Lian, Operations Manager of TNT Myanmar, wrote:

“First we thank our God. God saved our lives. My family and our colleagues are ok. Thanks for asking us and being worried about us. There is some damage to my house but no damage to office.

All the communication lines are down and still under repair. Most of the areas of Yangon are badly damage. All the big trees beside the roads destroyed all the electricity supply cables, land lines cables.

Out of Yangon division areas are very, very badly damage and there are thousands of dead bodies in water and thousands are still missing.
Over one million of people are homeless.”

TNT was able to help with first relief efforts
Since the weekend WFP has been involved in the emergency response activities for the afflicted areas in Myanmar. Ever since cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh last year November, the local WFP Office and TNT Bangladesh have been in close contact. WFP has contacted TNT Country Manager Turab Rahman to see where TNT could support WFP’s current relief activities.

Immediately after the weekend WFP’s request to ship high energy biscuits came in. Although TNT has no planes in the area at the moment Turab and his team were able to help WFP. They managed to arrange space on a flight of Thai Cargo. Today already 7 MT of high energy biscuits was successfully shipped from the Bangladesh’ capital of Dhaka to Yangon, Myanmar. Tomorrow an additional 11 MT will be shipped. TNT trucks have collected the biscuits at a WFP warehouse and have taken care of all arrangements in order to have the biscuits be shipped as soon as possible. TNT also assists in airport handling of another 18 MT of food supplies ready for transport.

Preparations
As known Myanmar is quite a difficult country to enter. Currently a UN team of 3 people is allowed to enter and make assessments of the damaged region and hopefully more aid workers will be allowed in. So far WFP has not requested TNT staff support. However in Bangladesh, Thailand and India TNT is looking to see whether staff from which country is allowed to enter Myanmar the quickest once WFP request staff support on the ground.

Furthermore TNT is trying to ship 100 kits of medical supplies from the Netherlands to the TNT colleagues in Yangon. The kits contain medicines for cholera, diarrhea and malaria.

Working together with industry partners
Since January this year TNT, UPS and Agility have officially launched a partnership to combine activities for emergency response. All partners are on stand-by with staff and equipment. So far TNT has been the only one to support the relief efforts into the country, UPS is assisting Red Cross Thailand with domestic transport.

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