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What kind of supplies and food and water are you trying to get in?

We're trying to work with the staff that we have to do the basic response. What we're hoping to do then is to bring in our professionals who have done disaster relief and humanitarian aid work for years. Many of those colleagues have applied for visas and are now waiting. We also have six warehouses around the world that are stocked particularly for natural disasters. They were ready and stocked for the tsunami in 2004 and for the earthquake in Pakistan, and right now we have a C-130 cargo plane that can carry about 40 tons of goods. It's based in Dubai, and it's getting loaded up and ready to go.

We will also have water-purification equipment. Each piece of equipment can clean enough water for thousands of people at a time. So having that in country will be a tremendous resource because it will give us quick access to a lot of clean water for a lot of people.

You obviously have to get the government's approval to get a plane like that into their territory. How is that going?

World Vision, other NGOs, and the U.N. have all been in continuous dialogue with the government, and we are hoping that the situation is resolved as quickly as possible, because what we're talking about here is a humanitarian crisis. People are wandering around looking for aid.

How many people do you think World Vision can realistically help?

Based on early estimates (we're still getting the final assessment from our team), we're looking at about $3 million that would help serve close to a quarter of a million people over the next 30 days. So that would be a full-scale humanitarian aid effort in the short term to try to begin taking care of immediate needs. But speaking long term, World Vision has no plans to leave the country. We hope to continue to work in country, as we have for four decades, to help them rebuild after this terrible storm.

How are local Christians faring with all this?

Many of the staff that we work with are Christians. One woman who is a colleague said she couldn't stop crying. She was walking around and just crying and felt so broken for these people. World Vision founder Bob Pierce said, "Let my heart be broken for the things that break the heart of God." And I think she was really feeling that.

We had World Vision Australia president Tim Costello here. He's actually been in Myanmar for close to 48 hours now. He led devotions for the staff this morning and really just encouraged them. It's been incredibly stressful. They're working long hours. They're not sleeping well.

Many of our staff have family and friends who are missing or who have passed away from the storm. And Tim really encouraged them to keep going and to persevere. And it was so neat to hear my colleagues say, "We're going to do that. We love our country. We love our community, and we want to help them. And we know that we need to be here for this time to help these people."

The tenacity and perseverance and dedication of the staff that I've talked to over the past few days are inspiring.

What is at stake over the next several days? I've heard many press reports saying that if the government doesn't expedite the relief efforts with international agencies such as yours, many more people are going to die.

We are in a crunch for time. Every day that goes by is another day we aren't able to provide the relief the Burmese people need. We're not talking about a static situation. It's constantly changing and developing as additional people are put at risk for disease, water contamination, and hydration. All of that can start to snowball.

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May (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 52