Restoration a Challenge in Rangoon

Rebuilding Burmese City's Electric, Water Systems Expected to Take Weeks

BANGKOK, May 7 -- Residents of Rangoon, Burma's largest city, faced the prospect Wednesday of weeks without electricity, a worsening drinking water shortage and spiraling food prices, even as authorities slowly began the massive task of cleaning up and repairing the city's shattered infrastructure.

State-controlled newspapers have appealed for patience and public understanding of the difficulties now confronting the authorities. But among middle-class residents of the colonial-era former capital, anger at the Burmese military is growing. It has been perceived as slow to respond to the catastrophe, leaving citizens to fend for themselves.

"In the past, if one person came out holding a poster for a protest, dozens and dozens of soldiers and police came out in five minutes," Ludu Sein Win, a prominent retired journalist, said in a telephone interview. "But now nobody can help us. They say we have to do everything by ourselves."

"We have no electricity, no water," he added. "A very big tree fell on the roof of my house, but when I told the municipal authorities, they told us we must clear it ourselves."

Five days after the storm, many residents are still busily working with neighbors to try to clear the decades-old trees that once lined streets but that now are choking them. "Around my neighborhood, the men are going out with saws and choppers from the kitchen," said Ma Thanegi, another prominent Burmese writer.

City workers have begun the massive job of restoring Rangoon's electricity system, which was knocked out by the cyclone, with all the power poles uprooted. But the job of rebuilding the entire local system is expected to take weeks, given the limited amount of equipment at hand.

In the meantime, without electricity, water pumps cannot run, which means that securing adequate drinking water has become a pressing task for all households, regardless of wealth. Many of Rangoon's more affluent residents have long relied on small, diesel-fueled power generators to help provide electricity during the long power outages that plagued the city even before the disaster.

Such generators can be used to run water pumps, but waiting in line for diesel -- which has doubled in price since the disaster -- can be a full-time job. "To get four gallons, you wait from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.," said one city resident.

Another said her family was carefully nursing its fuel supply, using the generator only for essential tasks, such as pumping water. Water trucks are in the city, selling water to poorer families, but at high prices. Food prices, too, have skyrocketed in local markets, putting a huge burden on the poor, many of whom have lost everything.

But Ma Thanegi said she believes it is unfair for middle-class Rangoon residents to gripe, given the unprecedented scale of the disaster.

"The government can't be helping the people rich enough to have phones," she said. "There are a lot of people without homes, with nothing at all. I think the government is doing the best they can with the resources, expertise and technical support they have. There is no experience of anything on this scale before."