'I thought my two sons were my future, what can I do? I am lost'
Reuters Posted online: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 at 1244 hours IST Updated: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 at 1302 hours IST
Banda Aceh (Indonesia), January 4: Relief workers flew helicopters and cajoled elephants to find and feed survivors and shift the rubble of razed towns on Monday, eight days after tsunamis changed the map of South Asia.
Aid workers struggled to help thousands huddled in makeshift camps in Indonesia's northern Sumatra, where two-thirds of the 145,000 killed across the region died, and to reach remote areas after roads and airstrips were washed away.
Half a world away, three US Presidents appealed to the American public to give money to ward off hunger and disease in the 13 countries that were hit by the killer waves on Dec. 26.
US helicopters began shuttling injured refugees, many of them children, out of some of the worst hit parts of Aceh province, where many towns and villages were wiped out.
"All the villagers started coming out of the woodwork, telling us they needed help. They said there were a lot more wounded people further inland up in the mountains," helicopter pilot Lieutenant-Commander Joel Moss said from the carrier Abraham Lincoln.
Pilots described columns of refugees trudging up the coast towards the provincial capital, Banda Aceh. Some charged the helicopters to fight each other for the food.
Amid the struggle to survive, few forgot their appalling grief and losses.
"I thought that my two sons were my future. With them I could build this family," said 22-year-old Shiva Shankari, choking back tears at a refugee camp on India's eastern coast.
While her daughter survived, the sons aged three and five that she and her sister struggled to save both died in the wave.
"What can I do? I am lost," she said. "My husband said, 'Why are you alive and my sons are dead?'"
LOGISTICAL NIGHTMARE
Affected nations, working with aid agencies, private relief groups and donor governments, have eased some transport bottlenecks, improving capacity to get in goods on a daily basis to serve the estimated 5 million requiring some form of aid.
Many airports are now bursting with emergency supplies. But a logistical nightmare looms in distributing them through vast regions where roads and bridges have been washed away, and uncontaminated water is scarce.
"The emergency teams are arriving to be blocked by a wall of devastation. Everything is destroyed," Aly-Khan Rajani, CARE Canada's programme manager for Southeast Asia, said in Jakarta.
In Sri Lanka, the second worst hit nation with more than 30,000 dead and 850,000 homeless, there was little sign of an organised government relief effort, but food distribution looked to be smoother.
"It's still very chaotic," said Save the Children's Irene Fraser, in Akkaraipattu. "But the situation is changing, coordination is happening."
Many in refugee camps were sick from a variety of ailments and deep wounds, and UNICEF said it had reports of children dying of pneumonia in Aceh.
The UN agency estimates about 50,000 children died across the region -- a third of the total death toll. Tens of thousands more have been orphaned.
"The biggest challenge is to make sure the children stay alive -- to avoid the outbreak of disease. One of the biggest problems now is that the still water may be as dangerous as the rushing water that killed in the first place," said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy, on a visit to rebel-run northern Sri Lanka.
As dehydration, disease and hunger threaten to add to the death toll, the world's response has gathered pace.
Over $2 billion has been pledged by governments and the World Bank, while private donations have been unprecedented.
US President George W. Bush and his two predecessors, his father George and Bill Clinton, made a joint public appeal.
"I ask every American to contribute as they are able to do so," said the president, whose initial reaction to the catastrophe was criticised as sluggish. He called his government's pledge of $350 million "an initial commitment".
"We offer our sustained compassion and our generosity and our assurance that America will be there to help," he said.
Vast resources, from foreign troops to military field hospitals, were on their way or already on the ground, but residents in some areas used more traditional methods. In Aceh and southern Thailand, relief workers used elephants to shift debris from shattered buildings and hunt for survivors.
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said the United Nations was concentrating efforts on Indonesia's Sumatra and Aceh Province, where he expected the toll to soar. "They had hardly roads before," he said. "Now they have nothing."
PREYING ON THE VICTIMS
As the world poured out its heart for the victims, a women's collective in Sri Lanka said rapists were preying on survivors at refuge centres. The UN Joint Logistics Centre said pirates were a threat to aid supplies along Sumatra's west coast.
In Aceh, officials said they were investigating reports of trafficking in orphans.
Sweden sent police to Thailand to investigate the reported kidnap of a Swedish boy of 12 whose parents were washed away, and said it was keeping the names of some victims secret after some homes in Sweden were targeted by thieves.
With the relief operation growing hourly, an aid conference called for Thursday in Jakarta was starting to draw leaders including Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Egeland said donors would be asked for a "few hundred million dollars" for immediate needs, and another pledging conference would be held on Jan. 11 in Geneva as longer-term requirements become clear.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Jeb Bush, the US President's brother, who has experience cleaning up Florida after a number of hurricanes, headed to the region to help assess reconstruction needs. One US Senator said Washington may eventually spend billions of dollars helping Asia recover.
In southern Thailand, where the known death toll is close to 5,000, forensic experts were trying to identify bodies. Nearly 4,000 people were still missing in Thailand, including more than 1,600 foreigners, many of them Scandinavian.
In Malaysia, the crew of a fishing boat brought in an Indonesian woman they had rescued four or five days after she was sucked out to sea. The woman, from Aceh, had clung to a floating sago palm and survived on its fruit.
"She said she had felt cold, but her will to survive was very strong," a local official said.
Banda Aceh (Indonesia), January 4: Relief workers flew helicopters and cajoled elephants to find and feed survivors and shift the rubble of razed towns on Monday, eight days after tsunamis changed the map of South Asia.
