December 29, 2004
Millions Hunt for Food as Tsunami Toll Over 80,000
Reuters

Millions of people around the Indian Ocean scrambled for food and clean water on Thursday, with the threat of disease and hunger now stalking survivors of the most devastating tsunami on record.

By Tomi Soetjipto and Dean Yates

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters) - Millions of people around the Indian Ocean scrambled for food and clean water on Thursday, with the threat of disease and hunger now stalking survivors of the most devastating tsunami on record.

The official death toll rose to 82,847 but the true scale of the disaster may not be known for days, or even weeks, as rescuers struggled to reach stricken areas and grieving survivors searched for relatives.

"Entire villages have been washed away," said Rod Volway, program manager for CARE Canada's Emergency Response Team which was one of the first aid groups into Indonesia's northern Aceh province, the worst-hit area.

"This isn't just a situation of giving out food and water. Entire towns and villages need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Everything has been destroyed."

The toll could rise to 100,000 when the dead are counted in India's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, said Peter Rees of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Countries around the world sent rescue teams, food and millions of dollars in aid to the hardest-hit nations of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand to cope with the aftermath of the strongest earthquake in 40 years.

As the world pledged $220 million in cash and sent an international flotilla of ships and aircraft with hundreds of tonnes of supplies, history's biggest relief operation battled with the enormity of the task.

"Perhaps as many as 5 million people are not able to access what they need for living," David Nabarro, who heads the World Health Organization (news - web sites)'s health crisis team, told Reuters.

"Either they cannot get water, or their sanitation is inadequate or they cannot get food."

Many villages and resorts, now little more than mud-covered rubble blanketed with the stench of rotting corpses, remained inaccessible to heavy equipment. Thousands of bodies were tumbled into mass graves.

Contaminated water, ruptured sewage systems and mosquito-borne diseases now threaten those who survived Sunday's monster wave, triggered by a 9.0 magnitude underwater quake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

The United Nations (news - web sites) said it was preparing to issue what could be its largest appeal for donations in its history to cope with its biggest and costliest relief effort.

Anger began to be heard above the grief as families left with no homes or possessions wanted to know why help was taking so long.

AIRCRAFT DROPPING FOOD

"I lost my wife and my youngest child, I lost all my possessions, no one has come forward to help me," said Peter Solomon, 45, a Sri Lankan fisherman.

With a large proportion of Asia's populations under 18, U.N. officials say up to a third of the victims could be children.

Indonesian aircraft dropped food to isolated areas along the western coast of Sumatra, an island the size of Florida, where the tsunami obliterated entire towns.

"I believe the frustration will be growing in the days and the weeks ahead," said U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland in New York.

Well over a million people have been left homeless. Hospitals are overwhelmed with the injured -- an estimated 100,000 or more across the region.

The killer waves dragged family members from each other's clutches, swept trucks and buses through buildings and flipped boats onto land, catching everybody by surprise on a holiday.

The quake was so powerful, U.S. scientists said it made the Earth jolt on its axis and shifted islands.

Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand faced death tolls of catastrophic proportions. Hundreds were killed in the Maldives, Myanmar, Malaysia and East Africa.

President Bush (news - web sites) said the U.S. pledge of $35 million in aid was just a start.

Bush said he had spoken to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia. "I assured those leaders that this is only the beginning of our help."

The U.S. military's 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force, based in Japan, will set up a forward command post in Thailand to coordinate U.S. efforts. The Pentagon (news - web sites) is sending the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, a helicopter carrier and a submarine to the region.

Insurers estimated damages at $13.6 billion but that does not include the costs of lost business and productivity.

"SWEPT AWAY"

Indonesia has suffered the biggest number of victims, with 45,268 known dead, although the toll could rise to 80,000 in Aceh alone, the province closest to the quake's epicenter.

In the provincial capital Banda Aceh, two aftershocks on Wednesday night woke nervous residents. Many people preferred to sleep outside.

Indian officials estimated their death toll would reach 12,500. Rescuers were struggling to reach remote islands in the Andaman and Nicobar chain.

In Sri Lanka, where the tsunami killed 22,000 people, many said there was still no sign of aid for ruined communities.

More than 2,000 Scandinavians are missing in the tsunami-ravaged resorts and 1,000 Germans are unaccounted for.

Many of them could be among the 6,043 missing in Thailand, where the official death toll rose to 1,975.

Forensic teams from Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland flew into Thailand to help identify bodies. Police believe up to 3,000 people died in the resort of Khao Lak.

The tsunami is the world's biggest disaster since a cyclone killed 130,000 people in Bangladesh in 1991.

(Additional reporting by Darren Schuettler, David Fox, Suresh Seshadri, Patrick Lannin, Michael Perry, Muklis Ali, Nopporn Wong-Anan, Joe Ariyaratnam)

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