More than 870 people were crammed into a Bago monastery on Friday night and were receiving food from monks and donated supplies.
“We arranged spaces for them to stay,” said local official Khin Maung.
Min Thaw, 66, said the ground floor of his two-storey house was inundated with water and the family had chosen to stay upstairs.
“I think it is the first heavy flood in seven or eight years in Bago,” he said.
EVACUATIONS
Five people have been killed, said Lay Shwe Zin Oo, director of Myanmar’s social welfare, relief and resettlement ministry, and the number of people evacuated across the country was expected to top 40,000 on Friday.
“Our department is giving necessary things for households evacuated to temporary camps,” she told AFP.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated about 50,000 Myanmar people had been affected by heavy monsoon rainfall and rising rivers and creeks since the beginning of August.
“There has been major damage to monsoon paddy crops in Mon and Kayin (states),” the agency said in a statement, adding that water levels in the Bago, Bilin and Salween rivers were now receding.