'Cyclone deaths were avoidable'

Dr Bhichit Rattakul, executive director of the Thailand-based Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC), told The Nation in an interview that more people could have been killed if Burma's authorities had not been informed in advance of the incoming cyclone.

Burma's government has announced that more than 22,000 were killed and over 40,000 others are missing in the wake of the cyclone's landfall on the Irrawady Delta last weekend.

In addition, an estimated one million people have been left homeless by the devastating cyclone, whose wind speed hit 190-200 miles per hour.

The catastrophe is the worst since the 2004 Asian tsunami which killed hundreds of thousands in several countries in Asia, including Thailand.

Failure to issue early warnings and evacuate people prior to the tsunami were blamed for the massive death toll.

As for Nargis, experimental weather forecast data provided by ADPC showed that the tropical cyclone in the Bay of Bengal off India was detected on April 27 - five to six days before its landfall in Burma.

Dr Bhichit said ADPC's forecast about this cyclone's formation was passed on to Burma's meteorological agency which confirmed its receipt.

To avoid serious consequences, Bhichit said governments, provinces and communities needed to strengthen their readiness in managing natural disasters.

"For example, we need to have community risk-reduction or emergency-rescue programmes well prepared in advance. We also need to disseminate data in a timely manner so that early warnings are available at provincial and local community levels, not only the national level, so that massive evacuation is possible," he said.

"Overall, it's about building the capacity to cope with these hazards," he said, adding that both early warnings and readiness were necessary or else the situation could be similar to Hurricane Katrina in the United States."