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GENEVA - The United Nations disaster reduction agency on Tuesday deplored the absence of an early warning system after Myanmar's cyclone Nargis left 15,000 dead.
"Looking at the number of deaths, it leads us to think that an early warning system had not been put in place," Brigitte Leoni, spokeswoman for the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, told journalists in Geneva.
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"Obviously many people did not have time to evacuate and find refuge in secured buildings," she said.
She stressed that early warning systems are "very important and can save many lives" and added that such systems need to be understood by the population to give them time to evacuate areas at risk.
The cyclone that hit Myanmar at the weekend destroyed 95 percent of the homes in the city of Bogalay, where more than 10,000 people died, the country's minister for social welfare told reporters on Tuesday.
Most of the 190,000 residents of Bogalay lost their homes after the storm swept through the Irrawaddy river delta in the early hours of Saturday, Maung Maung Swe told a press conference. - AFP/ir
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