According to official reports from Monday, Cyclone Mocha devastated western Myanmar, killing at least three people, injuring thirteen, and damaging over a thousand buildings.
According to locals, despite many bamboo shacks being damaged, the Rohingya Muslim refugee camps in southeast Bangladesh escaped the brunt of the storm.
Winds of up to 210 kph (130 mph) ripped roofs off houses and brought a storm surge that inundated Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine State’s provincial capital of Sittwe on Sunday.
According to the military-owned Myawaddy TV news channel, the storm, one of the strongest to hit Myanmar in years, destroyed or damaged more than 850 homes, 64 schools, 14 health facilities, and seven communication towers.
The Arakan Army militia in Rakhine State is using its own communication equipment to assess the storm’s damage because civilian networks have been severely disrupted.
According to the United Nations’ humanitarian office (OCHA), approximately 6 million people in the region required humanitarian assistance prior to the storm’s arrival, including 1.2 million people who had been internally displaced due to ethnic strife.
According to an OCHA spokesperson, they are conducting damage assessments at displaced people’s shelters, the majority of which are made of bamboo and located near the coast.
Cyclone Nargis swept through southern Myanmar in 2008, killing nearly 140,000 people.
Authorities and aid agencies scrambled to evacuate approximately 400,000 people in Myanmar and Bangladesh before Cyclone Mocha made landfall on Sunday afternoon.
A local resident reported over the phone that the majority of Sittwe’s buildings had been destroyed or severely damaged.
Because of a junta communications blackout, activists were having difficulty assessing the storm’s impact in parts of neighboring Chin State, where there has been heavy fighting between junta forces and pro-democracy insurgents.
