Myanmar is still in shambles, five days after cyclone Nargis swept over the country, killing tens of thousands of people. Though only a fraction of those fatalities were in Yangon, the capital city is still a mess, which is a bad omen for relief efforts in the more remote parts of the country.
As aid workers negotiate with the ruling junta for access to the devastated Irrawaddy Delta, the Google Earth team has put together a KML layer that lets users visualize the current situation on the ground. Culled from various satellites, it's not an encouraging picture.
These before and after shots are from NASA, which used a special instrument to make them near-real-color:
This pair of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite use a combination of visible and infrared light to make floodwaters obvious. Water is blue or nearly black, vegetation is bright green, bare ground is tan, and clouds are white or light blue.
NASA has also released a bigger, labeled image.
Related Stories:
· NASA Satellite Captures Image of Cyclone Nargis Flooding in Burma [Official Site]
· Google Imagery for Myanmar (Burma) [Lat Long Blog]
· Azmil77's Cyclone Nargis Photo Set [Flickr]
· Myanmar's Biggest City Still Paralyzed After 5 Days [NYT]
· Myanmar Travel coverage [Jaunted]
[Photo: NASA/MODIS Rapid Response Team]]]>