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BANGKOK — Flooding triggered by heavy monsoon rains in Myanmar’s southern areas has displaced more than 14,000 people and disrupted traffic on the rail lines that connect the country’s biggest cities, officials and state-run media said Monday.
State television MRTV reported Monday evening that the number of displaced people in Bago township, about 68 kilometers (42 miles) northeast of Yangon, the country’s biggest city, had climbed to that figure, and they were taking shelter in 36 relief camps. It said almost 1,000 more people in Mon state’s township, just east of Bago, were sheltering in three relief camps, and there some evacuations in a northern part of Yangon.
A senior official at the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, Lay Shwe Zin Oo, said that constant rainfall in the Bago region that began last week caused the flooding in the low-lying areas of its capital, Bago township. She said there were no casualties reported so far.
Bago township recorded 7.87 inches (200 millimeters) of rainfall, its highest level in 59 years, Myanmar’s Meteorological Department said Sunday. Rain or thundershowers was forecast for across the country until noon on Tuesday.
One of the leaders of an emergency rescue team in Bago told The Associated Press that the flooding was up to about eight feet (2.3 meters) deep in low-lying areas and four feet (1.2 meters) downtown.
“Almost the whole area of the town was flooded,” Thant Zin Maung, chairman of the Mizzima Thukha Charity Foundation said by phone on Monday. “It is the third flood in the town this year and the worst in many years. All the monasteries in the town have opened relief camps. Charity organizations are evacuating people from low-lying areas as much as they can.”
A 55-year-old resident of Bago’s Pan Hlaing ward interviewed by phone said the floodwaters were as much as six feet (1.8 meters) deep in her neighborhood, and her family members were living on the second and third floors of their…
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