Burma flooding forces 85,000 from their homes

The Associated Press

Posted: Aug 25, 2012 12:16 PM ET

Last Updated: Aug 25, 2012 12:15 PM ET

A man stands on the roof of his home in a flooded village in the Thar Pound township delta area. More than 700 villages are flooded in Burma. (Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)At least 85,000 people in Burma have fled their homes as the worst monsoon flooding in years submerged hundreds of thousands of hectares of rice fields, a government relief official said Saturday.
Heavy rains over the last few weeks caused the inundation, which primarily affected the country's southern delta region, said Soe Tun, a member of the government's emergency response team.
Around 70,000 people have been displaced in the delta and are being housed at 219 emergency relief centres set up at schools and monasteries, he said. Another 15,000 people have been displaced elsewhere in the country, and more than 240,000 hectares of rice fields have been swamped, he said.
Annual monsoon rains often cause flooding in the region, and this year's are the heaviest since 2004, Soe Tun said.
However, the delta region was devastated in 2008 by Cyclone Nargis, which killed about 130,000 people and destroyed more than 800,000 homes and buildings.
No casualties have been confirmed during the recent floods, which have affected 200,000 people nationwide whose fields have been swamped with water, Soe Tun said. Some families have had to move to the upper floors of their dwellings.
Local newspapers have reported that heavy rains and flooding also damaged bridges, homes and rail lines.
Burma is also known as Myanmar.