Peter
(Moderator)
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posted 1/25/05 10:44 AM
Very nice to see so many of you yesterday, and I greatly appreciate all the support for my ideas on helping a village in Sri-LankaI have been gathering a lot of information about the worst areas and the area that seems to need the most help from us is around Hambantota, 60 miles east of Galle on the south coast, this is a very poor area with little tourism, I will drive straight to this area on the 12th. I have made two good contacts in Sri- Lanka and this is one of the e-mails sent to me Dear Mr BrowneThank you for the condolences, concerns, responses and offers to help. May God reward you all for your intentions first.I have just returned from Hambantota and Kirinda, two badly affected towns. We took a lorry load and a jeep load of relief material to these areas. The scenes are beyond explanation. I am giving you a firsthand report of what I saw and experienced.We went to Hambantota via Ratnapura and thru Tissamaharama as the coastal road was not yet cleared and we were taking relief goods by lorry.The first thing which struck us was the magnitude of the disaster and the fury and force with which it had hit. The first buildings we saw were completely destroyed, I am referring to concrete structures and cement buildings. Even the concrete lampposts, power pylons and juge trees in Tsunamis direct path have been uprooted. Strangely there is total destruction for a bout 100 metres and then a row of houses untouched, then destruction again. There were without exaggeration cars on trees, buses inside buildings a boat on top of a roof, busses and lorries in the lake. Approximately 80% of Hambantota town is destroyed levelled to the ground. Kirinda town a 90% fishing town and harbour is completely destroyed. This was the material damage. There were cars. vans, buses trishaws completely smashed up and inside houses in the rear of town away from the coast. It is total economic meltdown about 70% of the wealthy of these towns have been reduced to "have-nots" I can't find a term to describe what has happened to the "have nots" of the town.Now the tragic part about the human loss.The stench emanating from certain parts of the town was unbearable. The officials and town folk told us 75% of the dead who had other family members surviving were buried with the help of the army. The other bodies which had no claimants were littered all over the place and rotting, the bodies of complete families, visitors and local tourists to the areas, traders and others from different towns passing through all these bodies were not claimed, and bodies trapped under rubble were decomposing. The army and volunteers were collecting these bodies in tractors and piling them up for burial. We had to use backhoe machinery to dig mass graves to bury the bodies which were sent to the Mosque, all they could do was bury them. Proper instructions and norms could not be followed due to the bodies piling up, the stench and problem of digging graves. God must forgive if there were shortcomings on the living who were trying to do their best. We thought the majority of the bodies were buried by about 1.30 in the afternoon. Suddenly we found further bodies decomposed in piles as the army and volunteers were finding more bodies as it was no pass 48 hours and the bodies which were submerged in the lakes and water bodies were surfacing bloated up and decomposed.It was hearth reding to see family members going through these piles of decomposing bodies liiking for relatives and loved ones. I leave it to your imagination the grief and sorrow. Unless you knew the person very well knowing scars and what they were wearing or very familiar like a brother, father, wife, sister etc, you could not identify as the facial features were all distorted and bloated, this made the identity process even more gruesome. every corpse which came out of the water was like a Sumo wrestler in size.Thank god by some foresight my wife had packed 200 gloves and a case of dettol which we distributed to some of the army volunteers who were doing a yeoman service in recovering these bodies.The silver lining to this dark cloud was the empathy shown by the people, they were coming in droves in cars, buses, lorries with food, clothing and water for the survivors. The humanity in the hearts of people were kindled and they responded. Unfortunately this caused further problems like congestions in the already battered and littered streets also food and clothing piling up, there were no logistical structure in place. The crying need of the hour was for volunteers to organize things for the effected townsfolk as they were totally in shock and grief and could not believe what had happened to them. The stronger ones were having their own problems, as we did not find any family who had not lost someone or worst members of their families were missing and hope of even finding their bodies for a proper burial were getting remote. Imaging your loved ones being buried in a mass grave all decomposed. Handling these people were very difficult as they would speak to you at a tangent as their minds were elsewhere. They would talk to you about getting things organized and suddenly burst into grief and complain about why god did this. and why them, or specifically "Why Me" how do you answer them and console them. God must give them strength to bear the loss. As he says "I will not burden you with what you cannot bear"In the evening we got a group together and stood by the mass graves and performed prayer, fulfilling an obligation of the community. As I found out most had been buried with out prayer.WHAT CAN WE DO"Please organise and send your contribution to any organization which you can trust will do a proper job. Sending lorry loads of food and clothes is not the dire need now. The need is ORGANIZATION and other basic needs.IMMEDIATE NEED AS PER MY ASSESSMENTToilet facilities, bedding, cooking utensils. The medicine and shelter,(I think the international govts and the local govt is handling this,) Organizational structure, PRAYER.LONG TERM NEEDMost of all reconstructing to settle them and help them get back into their former modes of employment to earn their living. If not we will turn them into eternal refuges and beggars if we keep just feeding and clothing them.If you can organize into groups and help resettle families with shelter and employment it will be great. If needed we will identify families and small groups for you to resettle. For example in Kirinda about 15 fishing families who had lost everything approached us and said to get them three boats and they can rebuild their lives. Each fishing boat costs about Rupees 300,000 ($3000) total Rs900,000 ($9000), each basic housing unit will cost about Rs150,00 ($1,500) If we can settle batches like this I feel we will get the "Bang for the Buck" as Junna puts it.Iqbal
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