LABUTTA, Myanmar -- Haunted survivors emerging from the devastation of Myanmar's storm-tossed southwest say entire families were wiped out when Cyclone Nargis cut its deadly path through the region.

Huddled in the township of Labutta, they told tales of survival against the odds even as children, mothers and fathers were swept away by the floodwaters that submerged huge swathes of the Irrawaddy delta.

"The storm came into our village, and a giant wave washed in, dragging everything into the sea," said one man in his 20s, who had trekked in from Kanyinkone village.

"Houses collapsed, buildings collapsed, and people were swept away. I only survived by hanging on to a big tree," he told Agence France-Presse.

"Only about 20 percent of the people survived in our village. I am the only one who survived in my family. My wife and my two children died in the storm," he said.

Labutta town is surrounded by 63 small villages in the low-lying Irrawaddy delta, one of the areas worst hit when the cyclone brought tidal waves washing over their homes.

"The waves were so strong, they ripped off all my clothes. I was left naked hanging in a tree," said one teenage survivor.

Based on stories from people emerging from the countryside, only about 20 percent of people in the area survived, Labutta residents said.

Tin Win, leader of a ward within the town, estimated that the death toll in those villages alone was 80,000.

"No one is left in my immediate family," said one shell-shocked woman who was unable to stop her tears. "I also lost many brothers and sisters and their families."

Another woman saw her one-year-old baby die, and was trying to seek comfort with the hundreds of others who fled when the ramshackle villages were washed away after the storm hit at the weekend.

"We sit and talk about our lost ones together and cry, and then we stop again to think how we can cope with this hardship," she told AFP.

Orphans, widows, grieving parents, monks -- their faces blank and staring -- sat on the floor of temporary shelters here awaiting assistance as conditions became increasingly desperate, with no drinking water, toilets or medicine.

Official state media in tightly-controlled Myanmar have put the number of dead and missing at more than 60,000.

If food, water and medicine does not reach Labutta soon, doctors in the area say the death toll will carry on growing.

"People really need systematic emergency assistance immediately," said a local doctor.