"The roof was flapping and then it opened up like a tin can," one woman told a relief team in the Insein Township. "Water was coming in and everything was floating. The nearby stream had risen four feet to reach the house... the water came up to my chest ...my neighbour's house collapsed and was completely destroyed. We have no water as our tank is full of dirty stream water."
An aid worker spoke of one family who narrowly missed being crushed as their house collapsed. "They had no place to run and they were afraid to go out from their house. The wind blew through their house with great force and dislocated everything."
Tearfund warned that the task ahead was "huge".
"The situation is desperate for so many people," says Sudarshan Sathianathan, Tearfund's Head of Asia Region. "The relief effort alone will take months and to rebuild lives and communities here seems a daunting development challenge. We have church volunteers that have themselves been hard hit and yet our partner staff have been able to mobilise them to help those worse affected. Teams are reaching the homeless with shelter materials and clothing. Food is feeding the hungry and our partner medical teams are treating many of the sick and injured. But much more aid is needed for a crisis like this - on a tsunami scale."
Tearfund is funding two of its partners in Burma's worst affected areas, where together they are helping some 55,000 people affected by the cyclone. The loss is huge, all having lost relatives, friends and in some cases, entire families, to the cyclone. Many homes and possessions were also swept away in the cyclone.
One Tearfund partner volunteer told of his visit to one village some four hours drive from Rangoon: "When we arrived we could see that most houses had been damaged and many had been laid flat. The destruction was evident... we could see that the wind had been overwhelming.
"We visited a church in that town that had been so badly damaged that only the frame was left standing. We met an elderly lady there who was very distressed. She said she had lost everything and there was only God for support now."
Tearfund partner teams have been able to reach some of the sick and injured in the worse affected areas with emergency items like food, water purification and medical aid. The scale of need is immense, it says, however.
"It is vital that we are able to continue to support our partners in Myanmar," continues Sudarshan. "Conditions are very difficult, people are desperate, but even in the midst of awful circumstances we are helping them. We are so grateful for the generous donations from supporters.
"It's this kindness confronting disaster and affliction that has enabled us to carry out the work, bringing relief now and in the longer term as communities will need our ongoing help to recover from this disaster."
Burma's military junta agreed on Monday to allow the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which it is a member, to oversee the distribution of foreign aid within Burma.
Burma's Foreign Minister George Yeo said, however, that aid workers from countries beyond ASEAN would only be granted visas on a case-by-case basis.
The damage caused by Cyclone Nargis stands at an estimated $10 bn. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has proposed a "high-level pledging conference" to raise international funds for Burma. He is due to fly to Burma on Wednesday.
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