KYAIKTAW, Myanmar — KYAIKTAW, Myanmar -- U Maung Saw and his family are in a race against the rain.
Cyclone Nargis pounded their house as flat as the mud where the broken pieces now lie. A 5-foot wave, driven by a storm surge that rolled 20 miles upriver from the Andaman Sea, crashed onto his doorstep. It washed away almost everything the family of seven owned - even the fish they were farming in a nearby pond.
The flooding and torrential rain May 4 also ruined a fifth of the unmilled rice they had stockpiled since harvesting the paddy from the rich soil of the Irrawaddy River delta, Myanmar's rice bowl, in late March. A week after the storm, the rest of the rice is so damp that it has to be spread on the mucky ground to dry slowly in the sun before it rots, too.
And therein lies the problem: A nasty tropical depression is bearing down on southern Myanmar. And in countless villages like this, where no one has received outside aid, the clock is ticking down to what threatens to be the next disaster.
Despite intense foreign pressure on Myanmar's military regime to open the reclusive Southeast Asian nation to relief operations, the generals continued yesterday to block most international aid. Adding to the problems, a Red Cross boat laden with relief supplies - one of the first international shipments - sank on its way to the disaster zone yesterday. The four aid workers on board survived.
Other aid was increasingly getting through, the relief agency said, but on "nowhere near the scale required."
Myanmar's state television said yesterday that the death toll had gone up by about 5,000 to 28,458 - with 33,416 missing - though some experts said it could be 15 times that if people do not get clean water and sanitation soon.
Weak from the lack of adequate food and avoiding using a bad leg, Maung Saw, 58, isn't waiting for help to arrive. With a hand from his sons, Maung Saw works from dawn until dusk, rebuilding their house from scratch, getting what strength he can from meals of boiled rice and white melon.
Even without a house, the family is better off than most neighbors. So Maung Saw and his sons are helping those less fortunate as they seek to hold out against the coming rain long enough for relief operations to begin.
"The government never gives us anything," he says, laughing. "We're not angry. We're not surprised. We don't expect anything else."
