Cyclone Nargis
When Cyclone Nargis struck Burma in May 2008 the Pandaw Team were fast to move and deploy our resources to assist people in the affected Delta areas. Amazingly neither of our ships were seriously damaged and they could be rapidly deployed to the worst hit areas where they were converted into floating hospitals.
Pandaw IV was handed over to the British medical charity Merlin and Pandaw II to Save the Children. Pandaw ran the marine side whilst the charities supplied doctors and paramedics. In both ships the dining rooms were converted into inpatient areas. With our water treatment plants, chiller rooms and accommodation for the medical teams both Pandaws made significant contributions to the disaster relief effort.
Several thousand patients were treated and five babies born on the Pandaws.
In addition the ships acted as supply centres and as facilities for the distribution of purified water to the villagers. Old Pandaw passengers and their friends donated over $800,000 to fund this effort.
In the immediate aftermath supply trucks convoys were sent down from Yangon to Laputta containing rice and key supplies. Later, the Pandaw Family Box was a great idea thought up by our local team – each box contained locally sourced essentials to help people get started and these were distributed by motor boats from the mother ships deep into the heart of the Delta to places that several months later had still received no aid.
Our teams also worked on supplying building materials for, first, monasteries that acted as refugee centres, and then schools, that double as community centres. Currently we are working on a project to rebuild ten primary schools in the Laputta area.
The two cruise ships returned to normal duties up river in September but we had raised enough money to purchase a 128 foot motorised barge. This was converted into a floating clinic. Complete with water treatment plant, generators and doctor accommodation this vessel is currently moving from village to village in the Laputta area working Merlin. The clinic barge doubles as a water carrier as during the dry season wells were running dry. The cargo holds were lined and sealed and the vessel can deliver bulk water supplies to villages.
All credit must go to the Pandaw Team in Burma who planned and executed the relief effort with dazzling speed and efficiency. Whilst a perplexed international aid community debated about how to get aid in, the Pandaw Team were there getting on with it!
