Cyclone survivors proved tough, experts say

But she and others in the relief community acknowledge that the worst-case scenario didn't come to pass.

"There are no signs of second wave of death as a result of Nargis," said UNICEF's Shrestha. "The incidences of diseases seen are not different from the usual disease burdens seen in the country."

Aid organizations, wary of jeopardizing relations with Myanmar's military regime, point out that any government would have had trouble coping alone with a disaster of such scale.

But independent observers speak more frankly.

"The local populations were probably not expecting much and they probably did not receive much," said Ramalingam and Mitchell, who work for the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action but were commenting in a personal capacity.

"In terms of accepted humanitarian standards and principles, assistance was clearly not proportional to need," they said in an e-mail. International aid couldn't have saved those who died in the storm, "but aid could have helped speed up recovery if properly managed."

The issue of foreign aid workers
The issue of foreign aid workers being denied visas overshadowed the work of the many Myanmar nationals working for U.N. and private agencies, the aid agencies said.

When the storm struck, the U.N. Development Program in Myanmar already employed more than 1,000 staff, mainly Myanmar nationals. World Vision, the largest private foreign humanitarian group, had 580 local staff, and like most groups, quickly hired more.

"It was the national staff that really led the response," said CARE's Brooks. "They speak the local language, they know the area, they know how to get things done."

Filling the gaps were the survivors themselves.

"They weren't just waiting around for help to come and bemoaning their fate, they were going out and picking up the pieces of their thatch houses, and they were starting to rebuild," said Brooks. "This idea of disaster survivors being helpless victims is just simply not true. These are some of the most resilient people that you'll ever meet."

When outside assistance came, said Ashley Clements, a spokesman in Yangon for World Vision, "it gave them an extra leg up and helped them avoid the worst of the crisis."

Past experience, including the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, shows that "virtually all the life saving work in the first 48 hours or so after a sudden impact emergency like this one is undertaken by the survivors," according to the researchers in London.

Relief workers warn against complacency
The concept of "helpless victims" is a myth the disaster relief community has been trying to dispel since at least the 1990s, said Alistair Henley, regional head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies based in Malaysia.

"We talk a lot about lessons learned, but I think there's also lessons forgotten or lessons rediscovered," he said.

Although the immediate threat may have passed, relief workers warn against complacency.

"The destruction in terms of loss of public and private infrastructure, including continued flooding of cultivable land, contamination of thousands of drinking water wells and destruction of thousands of schools causing more than a million children to stay out of schools, are all very serious concerns," warned UNICEF's Shrestha.

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