Tsunami aid at two billion dollars but survivors still waiting

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia -AFP
Aid pledges for Asia’s tsunami victims reached two billion dollars on a tide of New Year sympathy, but the United Nations warned it would take weeks for help to reach many survivors and that the death toll would likely rise to 150,000.

While the confirmed death toll from the catastrophe edged towards 126,000, relief work was stalled by flash floods that submerged at least 15 camps in Sri Lanka and a strong aftershock hit close to the epicentre of the December 26 quake which triggered the tsunamis.

As the scale of the damage became clearer, the World Health Organisation acknowledged that the first signs of potentially deadly diseases had emerged in India and Sri Lanka, though there was no reason for alarm yet.

Jan Egeland, the UN undersecretary general for emergency relief, said pledges had been recorded of two billion dollars, although another official said that figure was an approximation, after Japan announced it would give 500 million dollars, the biggest single donation offer so far.

As relief operations gathered steam, US Navy helicopters bringing emergency rations to worst-hit Indonesia were greeted by desperately hard-hit communities swarming for food. The country’s president ordered aid to be expedited to isolated areas.

“Immediately channel this aid,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told soldiers as he surveyed a major backlog of aid that has built up at the airport in Banda Aceh, the nearly levelled capital of Aceh province.
“Do your duties as well as possible, day and night. We have the obligation to save each and every one,” Yudhoyono said.

UN’s Egeland told reporters at UN headquarters in New York, “The biggest constraints are the logistical bottlenecks by far. We need to make small, damaged airstrips some of the busiest airports in the world.”
According to the leader of Indonesia‘s Red Crescent relief team in Banda Aceh, disease and illness are already starting to claim lives.

“Many victims survived the flooding but they suffered lung diseases because they swallowed foreign particles,” Indonesian Red Crescent team leader for Aceh Agoes Kooshartoro told AFP. “Over the past five days many people have died because of this. They survived the waves but they died of infections.”

The WHO has also noted outbreaks in India and Sri Lanka.
“There are increasing reports of diarrhoeal disease outbreaks coming from displaced persons’ settlements in Sri Lanka, in India,” David Nabarro, a top WHO official at Geneva said.

President George W. Bush, facing allegations at home and abroad that the United States was “stingy,” upped US assistance ten-fold for victims of the “epic disaster” to 350 million dollars.
“On this first day of a new year, we join the world in feeling enormous sadness over a great human tragedy,” Bush said in his weekly radio address Saturday.

The United States will also send up to 1,500 marines to help Sri Lanka‘s tsunami relief efforts, an official said.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for a long-term international effort to help overcome the tsunami tragedy in Asia which he said was a “global catastrophe”.

“At first it seemed a terrible disaster, a terrible tragedy. But I think as the days have gone on, people have recognised it as a global catastrophe,” Blair said in his first public response to the natural disaster.
Secretary of State Colin Powell will visit Thailand and Indonesia on a tour of damage and relief efforts, a senior US official said.

China has promised a politically significant 60.5 million dollars, making it the biggest donor after Japan, the United States, Britain and Sweden — the European country that looks likely to suffer the biggest death toll in the disaster.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told a US television network that he would visit Indonesia on Thursday to coordinate international relief.
“I will go to Jakarta to launch the appeal from there and work with the leaders of the region who are also determined to play a role,” Annan told ABC News.

New Year’s celebrations in much of the world were muted or transformed into fund-raisers, with Sydney‘s fireworks show alone generating more than 850,000 US dollars for the disaster appeal.
The prime ministers of Australia and Japan, two members of a US-led tsunami aid coalition announced by Bush, were set to head to Jakarta for the summit, press reports in the two countries said.

In India, where nearly 13,000 people died, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked the one billion plus population for donations.
“It is at times like this that the best in us comes out and the human spirit transcends all adversity,” Singh said in a national press advertising campaign launched Saturday.

Indonesia‘s westernmost Aceh province, considered the ground zero of the tsunami destruction, continues to be shaken by major aftershocks, with three measuring 5.0 or above on the Richter scale recorded overnight and another on Saturday measuring between 6.4 and 7.0 on the Richter scale.

A heavy rain hit the death-stained streets of Banda Aceh Saturday, in what some saw as a symbol.
“This is a cleansing the soil of Aceh from everything that is unclean,” said Lukman bin Sulaiman, 50, a pedicab driver, looking up at the persistent drizzle. “I hope that Aceh can now return to the good times.”

Thailand on Saturday said more than 4,800 people had died in the tidal wave disaster — over half of them foreign tourists — pushing the confirmed death toll from the international catastrophe near 126,000.

Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s office said nearly 14,000 people were missing in the island, which could push its official death toll to more than 42,000.
But the UN’s Egeland said the true figure across Asia may never be known.
“What we see is that the figures may be approaching 150,000 dead. The vast majority of those are in Indonesia and Aceh, which is the least assessed area because of logistical constraints,” he told reporters.

Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said officials would start giving only general estimates on the death toll as it was too high to be exact.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Thailand‘s final death toll was likely to top 7,000 to 8,000.
“We expect to find more corpses as everywhere we went we found bodies,” Thaksin said, wishing Thais a happier 2005 after a year dogged by misfortune.

2-1-2005
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