Floods and landslides in Myanmar triggered by last week’s Typhoon Yagi and seasonal monsoon rains, which typically runs from May to October have been particularly severe this year, across Myanmar have killed 226 people with 77 missing, the Myanmar Alin newspaper reported on Tuesday (September 17, 2024). It has also been reported by media that at least 56 townships in Kayah, Kayin, Mon and Shan states, and the central Bago and Mandalay regions, as well as the Ayeyarwady region and Naypyidaw, were affected by severe floods. 

The catastrophic flooding that has swept across Myanmar is displacing thousands of citizens and causing significant damage to homes and infrastructure. In this chaos, the struggle for survival becomes a harsh reality for many families. 

A father’s Desperate Act

Taungoo township of Bago region, Myanmar: As floodwaters rushed through the  residences, a father was forced to make a split-second decision when he realised the imminent danger caused upon his young daughter, Eaint Muu Tha Khin (အိမ့်မှူးသခင်). In a desperate attempt to save his daughter, he lifted her above the rising waters, prioritising the child’s safety above his own. 

Tragically, despite his best efforts, the rising currents became overwhelming, and witnesses who later participated in the rescue mission reported a heart-wrenching scene, filled with grief and sorrow. Even after the father was lost to the depths, his hands remained raised, still holding the child above the water. 

“ည၉နာရီလောက်မှာ မိုးတွေတအားသည်းရေတွေစီးလာပြီးအိမ်ရော မိသားစုရောရေနဲ့အတူပါသွားတယ်။ မြေးလေးကတော့ တစ်ညရေထဲရောက်သွားတယ်။ ရှာပေးတဲ့သူတွေက ညတည်းက မနက်ထိ ကလေးငိုသံကြားနေရတယ်။ ဒိုက်ထဲကနေလက်ပြနေလို့ရှာတဲ့သူတွေတွေ့ပြီး ကယ်လာတာ။ သူ့ဖအေက ကလေးကိုမြှောက်ထားပေးတာ။ သူ့အဖေ ကိုယ့်သားကတော့ အသက်မရလိုက်ဘူး”

-ဒေါ်နန်းရင် (Daw Nang Yin, grandmother) 

Translation: “At 9 o’clock in the evening, the rain poured down heavily and the house and the family were washed away with the water. The searchers heard the baby crying from night to morning and my granddaughter was left all alone for the whole night. They found and rescued the child by her cries. Her father raised the child in his arms. Her father, my son, did not live.” -Daw Nang Yin, grandmother. 

The child, saved from the rising waters, is now receiving care from both the support of the community and from social platforms all around Myanmar, but the tragic loss of the father’s life along with many others weigh heavily on our country.

” သမီးလေးမှာ မိဘမရှိတော့တဲ့အတွက် အဘွားဖြစ်တဲ့ကျွန်မကဘဲ မေတ္တာအပြည့်ပေးရမယ်လေ၊ ကျွန်မအသက်ရှင်နေသ၍ ရင်နဲ့မကွာ စောင့်ရှောက်မှာပါ။ ပိုက်ဆံတွေပုံပေးပြီး လာခေါ်ရင်တောင် မြေးလေးကို မပေးနိုင်ဘူး ” -ဒေါ်နန်းရင် 

Translation:

“Since my granddaughter has no more parents, I, the grandmother, must give her my full affection and attention. As long as I am living, I will fully protect her. Even if people shove money at me in order to take her, I won’t give them my (only) grandchild.”
-Daw Nang Yin, grandmother. 

As we reflect on his bravery, it is important to recognise the broader humanitarian crisis that is unfolding in Myanmar and the need for ongoing support and aid for those affected. The final gesture of lifting his child above the waters will forever stand as a symbol of a parent’s unconditional love and sacrifice with a powerful remainder of the lengths a parent would go to protect their child. Furthermore, this loss of a heroic figure should bring us all together as a community to support one another in times of challenges.  

Hannah
PISM, Myanmar

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Citation

Associated Press. (2024, September 17). “Casualties in Myanmar push Southeast Asia’s death toll from Typhoon Yagi past 500.” Voice of America. https://www.voanews.com/a/casualties-in-myanmar-push-southeast-asia-s-death-toll-from-typhoon-yagi-past-500-/7787322.html, accessed 19, September 2024 

STUN Magazine-Myanmar (2024, September 17). “ဒိုက်တွေကြားထဲမှာ ကလေးငိုသံကြားလို့ ကြည့်လိုက်တဲ့အချိန်မှာ သမီးလေးက သူ့အဖေရဲ့လက်ထဲ…”. Facebook.  https://www.facebook.com/share/p/o822j4suTKTmhMa1/?mibextid=K35XfP, accessed 19, September 2024

Popular Journal (2024, September 18). “ဖခင်ပေးခဲ့တဲ့အသက်နဲ့ ဆက်လက်ရှင်သန်မယ့် သမီးလေး အိမ့်မှူးသခင်…”. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/XgWxXrHVy6s9M9fr/?mibextid=WC7FNe, accessed 19, September 2024