When flash floods forced a 15-foot surge of water through the village of o-Opor, farmer Ko Zaw Oo swept his two youngest children into his arms and made a desperate attempt to cling onto a coconut tree as his home broke apart around him.

As he tried with all his might to hold onto the tree and his children the forces of the cyclonic wave ripped one of them away. His wife and eldest child had already been lost to the deluge that roared in across the Ayerarwaddy delta area.

His wife and two children are now among the more than 22,000 dead and 40,000 missing, statistically minute as far numbers go, but their loss has ripped out the heart of Ko Zaw Oo. Of his village of 300 only 70 people remain. In a moment the village of wooden homes in Latputa Township, where he has lived almost his whole life, was decimated.

Shaking with emotion and tears, farmer Ko Zaw Oo said: “I found it hard to hang on as my hands were full. Finally I had to let go of my four-year-old.”

Ko Zaw Oo, in his mid-30s, knew there was a storm coming but he didn’t expect the terrible wave that came with it.

''It wiped away our bamboo house,” he said. “There was nothing left to hang on. My wife and eldest child disappeared.

''At one point, my two-year-old daughter froze. I feared she was dead. But when I shouted at her and shook her, she came back to life”

Ko Zaw Oo is now being cared for by relatives but since no aid has arrived in the town survivors are living on the scraps that have been left behind.

Meanwhile, in nearby town of Pyinsalu, only 400 people survived from a population of 4,000. The town was also hit by the Tsunami of December 26 2004. In that disaster only a few people died.

Local authorities say that in the Latputa area alone up to 50,000 people are missing, presumed dead.

Ko Soe Kyaw Kyaw, a World Vision Area Development Manager, who conducted the informal assessment of the area, said: ''The number of orphans would be significant in Latputa because many children go there for schooling. Their families live in nearby villages, some of which have totally vanished.”

Ko Soe Kyaw Kyaw is one of a World Vision team that has just returned from Latputa in the devastated Ayerarwaddy Division and reported widespread carnage and pollution of fresh water sources that is now putting survivors, especially children, at risk.