The Race To Save Lives

The Age

Tuesday January 4, 2005

COMPILED BY CHEE CHEE LEUNG

INDIA

15,160 DEAD

Rescuers are conducting an island-by-island search for thousands of missing people. Most of the casualties are in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

In the southern fishing town of Nagapattinam, which bore the brunt of the giant wave, survivors are now returning from government relief camps to the fishing hamlet of Nambiar Nagar to assess the damage and try to rebuild their live. Victims line up at the community centre for daily rations such as rice, lentils and biscuits. In the town, most of the 1000 or so men clearing rotting corpses are lower caste dalits from neighbouring villages. They are the "untouchables", who carry out the gruesome task for a meal and a small amount of money.

AID GROUPS

Oxfam: Enough equipment has arrived to provide clean water for 50,000 families, and work is under way to establish water distribution.

TEAR Australia: The group is continuing to provide relief to about 20,000 people with its partners who have emergency teams in India, including the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

World Vision: Trying to send staff to the Andaman and Nicobar islands. The delivery of relief goods to 200,000 people in India is expected to be completed by the weekend.

THAILAND

5046 DEAD

Teams searching for bodies zeroed in on the hardest hit areas as Thai and Japanese navy ships scoured the seas for more dead. On Phi Phi Island, Thai and foreign rescuers used heavy diggers to work through the rubble of collapsed buildings. Interior Minister Bhokin Bhalakula said the main search effort would continue in Phang Nga province, where thousands of foreign tourists and Thai villagers were swept away from the area around Khao Lak beach. The UN's emergency relief co-ordinator said a command-and-control centre set up at the U-Tapao military air base in Thailand was co-ordinating the many civil and military flights involved in the relief effort. Australia, Britain, Germany, India, Pakistan, Singapore and the US are among countries providing civil or military aircraft. Over the weekend in Nam Khem in southern Thailand, workers set up giant pumps and began to drain foul water from a mine shaft. In the tourist hub of Phuket, there are some signs of a return to pre-tsunami life.

AID GROUPS

Care Australia: Providing locally procured basic medicines and equipment. Distributing first-aid kits, oral rehydration salts, water, clothing, candles and bedding directly to disaster victims.

Red Cross: Hundreds of volunteers continue with the massive relief effort, delivering body bags, distributing hygiene items and deploying medical staff to provide medical services.

SRI LANKA

29,957 DEAD

Flooding has compounded the misery for survivors and caused difficulties for troops and aid workers trying to deliver relief. The UN said relief teams hoped to reach all of the estimated 700,000 hungry in Sri Lanka within several days. Aid officials said there was plenty of food and clothing, but thousands of people were living in hundreds of small camps and other temporary shelters without adequate sanitation, and health officials in Colombo warned of the possibility of widespread disease.

UNICEF and Sri Lankan child-care groups are trying to set up a national database to help resettle orphaned children with grieving parents. Officials say children account for 40 per cent of the country's death toll, and the Government has appealed for doctors, psychologists and pediatricians to help give counselling to the young survivors.

AID GROUPS

Medecins Sans Frontieres: Operations have started in the Ampara district, with 13 mobile clinics seeing 150 people a day. Two field hospitals are likely to be set up when supplies arrive.

TEAR Australia: Two disaster reponse staff - a surgeon and a construction engineer - leave for Sri Lanka today.

Teams will be travelling to Trincomalee and Galle today, but there are concerns about looting so they are seeking police and building 20 child-friendly centres.

SUMATRA (INDONESIA)

94,081 DEAD

Cargo planes from many nations continue to land supplies at provincial capital Banda Aceh and Medan airports. The UN says major progress has been made in distributing supplies piled up at regional airports and in evacuating people left homeless. At least three Australian helicopters are due to land and begin running aid down Aceh's devastated west coast.

Starving survivors besieged US and Indonesian helicopters carrying food and clean water as they landed for the first time on the north-west Sumatra coast, forcing some deliveries to be aborted.

Tropical rains in northern Aceh created more problems for troops and aid workers. The UN's children's fund UNICEF says there are reports that children are dying of pneumonia. Aid workers estimate 800,000 people in Aceh are living without clean water. Australian Army engineers from Darwin finished attaching a mobile water treatment plant to Banda Aceh's broken water main on Sunday, and yesterday distributed water bladders via aid agency Oxfam.

AID GROUPS

Australian Red Cross: An assessment team visited Meulaboh and a basic health emergency response unit will be deployed there soon. Two hospitals in Aceh received medical supplies.

CARE Australia: An assessment team that arrived in Banda Aceh on Sunday morning has reported "absolute chaos". CARE plans to send another 60 staff to the area, with food aid a priority.

Caritas Australia: Has begun setting up community kitchens and providing cooking supplies and utensils and is supporting a health post in Banda Aceh.

Medecins Sans Frontieres: From Banda Aceh, the organisation has taken mobile clinics to the remote coastal town of Lhok Timon. The team arrived on Sunday and distributed rice to 1500 people.

There are plans to drop a water sanitation team in the same area.

Oxfam: Two public health specialists have arrived in Banda Aceh and four staff from Oxfam's East Timor field office are expected to arrive in Aceh in the coming days.

World Vision: A shipment of food and family kits was due to arrive yesterday in Medan.

THE OTHER COUNTRIES

ANDAMAN AND NICOBAR ISLANDS (INDIA)

(number of dead included in India toll) Local authorities said a Government official had been held captive temporarily and police sent reinforcements after starving survivors protested at the inadequate relief operation. A Home Ministry report released on Sunday said about 812 people died in Andaman and Nicobar, and another 5400 people were missing.

BURMA

59 DEAD

In the first assessment of the damage, a team from the World Food Program and UNICEF found that in the Irrawaddy Division near the capital, Rangoon, two of 26 townships suffered serious damages, 10,000 people required immediate food aid, 29 were killed and 2800 people displaced. Medecins Sans Frontieres and the Red Cross hope to tour the islands off the country's southern coast this week.

MALDIVES

74 DEAD

Officials say the archipelago's low-lying nature means damage will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. A decision on whether to rebuild and resettle the island has not yet been made. A member of a US assessment team said Maldivian authorities had asked the US military primarily for engineering equipment to clear debris, and for water purification and storage equipment.

AID GROUPS

Australian Red Cross: An assessment team was sent to the Maldives, where the target for help is 10,000 people.

EAST AFRICA, INCLUDING KENYA, SEYCHELLES, SOMALIA AND TANZANIA

137 DEAD

The number of survivors in need of food aid could go up because new assessments are planned for remote parts of Somalia in north-eastern Africa.

BANGLADESH

2 DEAD

MALAYSIA

74 DEAD