Aid official describes earthquake relief efforts in Myanmar : NPR

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

As with many natural disasters, the death toll following last Friday’s massive earthquake in Myanmar is likely to grow as we learn more. The death toll has already exceeded 2,000 people, according to the country’s military government. And it has already created a humanitarian crisis for the people who survived, who must now live in the aftermath. With me now is the Myanmar acting country director for the International Rescue Committee, Mohamed Riyas. Thank you for being with us.

MOHAMED RIYAS: Thank you very much for having me.

KELLY: I wonder if you would start just by describing your experience of the earthquake. You were in Myanmar when it hit last Friday?

RIYAS: Yes, that’s right. I was in Myanmar. And I was in my office, and the building started shaking, and we all came out. I was in Yangon. Fortunately, Yangon was not affected that much. The severe damage was in Mandalay and Sagaing.

KELLY: Yeah. So you felt the building shake. What are you hearing from your teams who are on the ground closer to the epicenter now? How are they describing the scene?

RIYAS: What I’m hearing from them is that there is a growing humanitarian need there. People are sleeping outside, and the hospitals are overcrowded, and the people living, they are experiencing lack of clean water. We can still reach Mandalay. That is a good thing. So the roads are OK. People can reach there. But Mandalay is second largest city in Myanmar, so you can imagine the humanitarian need there.

KELLY: When you say there’s a growing need for things as basic as clean water, just give me a sense of what that means, how many people we’re talking, how difficult the situation is.

RIYAS: Just to give you a number, one town in Mandalay experienced nearly about 80% of the houses damaged because of the earthquake in one town. So that’s the scale that we are talking about. Then if you look at the total population of Mandalay, I would say nearly about 60- to 70% of that population will need urgent support. That’s the scale that we are talking about.

KELLY: And you’re talking about teams that were – what? – already in the country before the earthquake. What about aid that is now arriving because of the earthquake? Where is it coming from? Is it getting in?

RIYAS: Some international aid is coming in. I mean, India and, you know, some other countries have sent the search and rescue team. So in that form, the aid is kind of, you know, coming. I’ve also seen the international donors are increasing their contribution, their support to Myanmar – European donors and the others that have seen increasing funding for the agencies that are doing the emergency response.

KELLY: Since I’m speaking to you from Washington, I will ask about the response from the United States, particularly as you will have seen the news reports and been tracking closely, the Trump administration has gutted a lot of American foreign aid, has dismantled much of USAID. Are you seeing any impact from that in Myanmar?

RIYAS: We have not seen any U.S. funding. I mean, at least I have not seen U.S. funding so far for this particular crisis, but we actually think U.S. can definitely scale up their funding because this is one of the major humanitarian crises in the history of Myanmar, and I think the U.S. funding going to be very critical to respond to this emergency. I mean, the organization that I work, so far we still have not – in Myanmar IRC – we still have not received any funding support from U.S. government.

KELLY: For Americans listening, it feels important just to put this into context. The country was already in crisis. There’s been a civil war raging in Myanmar since 2021, and I was seeing that fighting has continued, that the military fighter jets are dropping bombs on rebel positions even after the earthquake. Is that affecting relief efforts?

RIYAS: There are, of course, still restriction when it comes to getting approvals and moving humanitarian stuff. But at least my team, they were able to reach Mandalay this evening. Of course, there are checkpoint in the road and, you know, they want to make sure what we are kind of, you know, carrying. We still have not taken anything to Sagaing and the other areas, but at least in Mandalay we did not face any significant challenges.

KELLY: And once they’re there and up and running, what will they be able to do? What’s item No. 1?

RIYAS: Item No. 1 is mobile medical health. There are a lot of people who got injured, they’re come into the hospital to take medicine. Health system can’t cope with this number, so we have deployed our mobile medical health team to support the effort already that is happening in the hospital. And then making sure people have clean drinking water because we have seen in emergencies, if you don’t provide clean water to people, then you will end up with so many issues like waterborne diseases. That’s going to be a disaster on top of another disaster.

KELLY: Problems creating further problems, indeed.

RIYAS: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.

KELLY: That’s Mohamed Riyas, Myanmar acting country director of the International Rescue Committee. Thanks so much for your time.

RIYAS: Thank you very much for having me.

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