One year ago today, the southern delta of Burma was ripped apart by one of the most destructive cyclones the world has ever seen. Cyclone Nargis tore across the land in the middle of the night, bringing untold terror to an already beleaguered population.

The paddy farmers of the delta were in the final stages of harvesting their rice crops. What they had already harvested was blown away. What was left in the land was ripped from the soil and contaminated with salt water.

In all, 85,000 bodies were found and a further 53,000 people were never seen again.

Those who survived lost almost everything but their lives. Families were wiped out, hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed and any insurance people had – food, water or cash – were churned to the heavens. An email arrived in the aftermath from a Trócaire partner in the delta. He wrote: "With tears in their eyes, women explained how the waves snatched their babes from their bosoms. As our boat moved along, the body of a five-year-old boy drifted in the water, child of a mourning mother somewhere, the boy drifting in unknown waters, waiting for a burial, unwept and unsung."

But from the outset miracles were happening too. As stories emerged of untold tragedy and loss, people also spoke about how the winds broke down religious and ethnic barriers. Everybody worked together when the rescue began.

For outside agencies, getting to these people proved extremely challenging for many aid agencies. The wall-to-wall images of suffering and destruction that we saw after the tsunami were largely missing for the simple reason that no journalists were allowed into the country. In the best conditions, the Ayerawaddy Delta is difficult to navigate: an intricate and vast network of spits and peninsulas often reachable only by water. Ironic, then, that the lack of drinkable water became such a problem after Nargis.

It is in emergencies like this one that Trócaire's partnership approach really comes into its own. Small partner organisations in Burma that we have been working with for many years are by far the best-placed to respond to crises on a local level. They are best positioned to provide food and other basic commodities from the very beginning of a disaster.

The real heroes are the families and communities who were hit. Village leaders and community-based organisations have been doing excellent work with the provision of food, agricultural tools, health care and the re-establishment of schools. This was a disaster of tsunami-proportions and the organic, localised response has been phenomenal. In the Burmese context, where the government blocked a coordinated response by foreign agencies, this was all the more important.

None of this would have been possible without the generous support of the Irish people. An incredible €1.4m was donated by the Irish public in response to our emergency appeal.

Full recovery will be slow. The farmers will have to sit through another two rainy seasons before the soil recovers fully. The decline in productivity after Nargis sent a ripple throughout the country and a recent report by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation shows that at least five million people in Burma are now living below the food poverty line.

Trócaire provided more than 60,000 people with food, water and other items such as soap and blankets in the immediate aftermath. Over 210,000 more people were later given small grants to stimulate the local economies and allow them to choose themselves what they needed most, from household items to fertilisers to fishing nets. Over 30,000 students were helped return to school.

The Burmese believe in spirits. Ghosts of elders traditionally haunt the land, but in the wake of Nargis it was not just the old that were taken away. Whole villages now are afraid to return to the site of her homes. A monk told me how he believed that the catastrophe was a karmic response to the misdeeds of powerful people in Burma.

But real ghosts exist here. Memories of that day and the spectres of poverty and hunger still haunt this landscape. But Cyclone Nargis provided an opportunity for Burmese people to work together and, with help from humanitarian organisations, to build better lives. Burma cannot be forgotten once again.

Noel Molony is Trócaire's regional manager for
South-East Asia