Disaster Deepens in South Asia

In the aftermath of the world's deadliest known tsunami, Christian organizations worldwide began relief efforts delivering aid, burying the dead and giving hope to survivors in South Asia.

The fierce tsunami, triggered by the most powerful cataclysmic earthquake in 40 years, struck off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, on Dec. 26, 2004.

Initial efforts will focus on delivering food, water, blankets and other essentials to coastal villages in South Asia — some of which were nearly wiped out by towering waves.

"In Chennai, where the national office of World Vision India is situated, the first warning came as a slight tremor,” said World Vision's Jayanth Vincent reporting from India. “Around 7:30 a.m. walkers and children playing on the Marina beach of the city were taken aback and started running at the sight of a wall of water rising to flow into the almost a kilometer wide beach towards the car park.” Reports say that the surge was so strong that parked cars were thrown around like toys.

The list of things not affected by the tsunami is far shorter than the things that were destroyed. Road, rail, port and other infrastructure suffered extensive damage – inhibiting immediate relief efforts and delaying rebuilding efforts. Houses, most merely mud huts with thatched roofs, stood no chance at all against the angry wall of water – their contents suffering the same fate. Fishing boats and nets, some having been handed down from one generation to the next…all are gone. Standing crops, the thin line between survival and starvation for peasant farmers, have been completely decimated.

The need for relief is undeniable. The need for long-term assistance also is a necessity.

The confirmed death toll has surged past 117,000 (as of Dec. 30) in nine countries, with thousands washed out to sea.

Coastal areas of Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, the Maldives and Malaysia took the brunt of the waves' force as tsunamis speeding as fast as 500 miles per hour blasted ashore, wiping out everything in their paths. The 9.0 quake's force was felt more than 3,000 miles away in Somalia, on the east coast of Africa, where hundreds reportedly also died.

Indonesia has updated its toll to almost 80,000 (as of Dec. 30) with entire coastal villages washed away.

The Health Ministry in Jakarta says the toll has leapt from earlier figures, after new tallies from the remote town of Meulaboh in western Aceh province, which had been cut off for days.

In Sri Lanka 27,000 people (as of Dec. 30) are confirmed killed, with nearly 5,000 still missing.

India's death toll has hit 11,330 (as of Dec. 30) with many thousands still missing.

Thailand has confirmed 2,400 deaths (as of Dec. 30) from the tsunami, among them over 700 foreign tourists, with another 6,000 people missing and feared dead.

At least 75 people have been killed in the Maldives with another 42 missing, while 66 people have been killed in Malaysia (as of Dec. 30).

Church laymen build coffins
A small cement building, Krabi Baptist Church in Thailand was still adorned with colorful lights and tinseled decorations from Christmas. A large banner proclaiming Joy to the World hung in the baptistery.

Several of the laymen of the church used the parking lot to saw and nail together rectangular pieces of plywood. Rough coffins were made.

“We are doing what we can,” says the church’s pastor, Bro. Dusit. He explained that the mayor of Krabi asked local businesses and organizations to build larger coffins. The standard local coffins are not big enough to hold some of the larger-framed foreigners killed the day after Christmas by one of the worse natural disasters ever seen.

Relief effort to remote areas
While much of the world’s attention focuses on the damage and death at world-famous tourist destinations such as Thailand’s popular Phuket Island, Southern Baptist relief workers have begun to mobilize to reach the areas virtually untouched by even the local government.

The coordinator for Southern Baptist disaster relief in Asia, Pat Julian,* said that while the tragedy is terrible everywhere, those areas which bring the most capital are the ones which will be rebuilt the fastest.

“The resort areas and tourist spots will be back up and running in no time. The government will protect their capital base — it’s just a fact,” he says. “There are other people, though, that need more help; other areas have sustained great damage but no one has been out to assess the losses and needs.”

“Meeting human needs as an extension of the hands of Christ means that the assistance needs to produce eternal repercussions,” Julian emphasized. “The best results are reached through a degree of patience. After the first wave of aid has come and gone, it is much easier to see exactly what the true, lasting needs will be for the people and communities affected by tragedy,” he said.

We are going to the devastated villages and asking the people what their needs are instead of making assumptions and throwing things at them that they can’t use, he says.

After meeting with local government officials on Dec. 29, Julian and Dusit traveled several hours to assess damage on the outer coast of Lanta Island. Ringed by beach resorts, Lanta also is home to a largely overlooked Muslim people group known as the Sea Gypsies.

Located in small communities along the coast, the Sea Gypsies fish for food from longboats and live on stilted houses directly on the normally calm beach.

On Dec. 26, however, most of the villagers fled to the surrounding hills as 20-foot waves shattered their lives. Amazingly, many of the wooden houses are still standing. Below the houses, however, shattered boats litter the beach.

We can’t repair any of them, says a villager who was brave enough to come down the mountain. Most of the 90-plus families refuse to come back down to the village — out of fear of more tsunamis. The villager said he watched the waves completely envelop his stilted house — more than 20 feet high.

While there was not a great loss of life, the villagers’ very livelihood is gone.

“We eat fish,” says Maka, another villager. “Without boats, we can’t fish. Without fish, we don’t eat. “

Following the tsunami, government aid consisted of small first-aid kits and a one-time, 2-kilogram provision of rice.

This is a phenomenal opportunity and an open door for the local church to make a difference in these people’s lives, Julian says.

Even before the tragedy of Dec. 26, the members of Krabi Baptist Church had been praying for a way to make inroads with the Sea Gypsies.

Within a week, several tons of rice and replacement fishing nets will arrive at the coastal village — relief aid made possible by the generosity of Southern Baptists, and given through the channels of the local church.

[Pastor Dusit] knows this area better than anyone, Julian says. We want to give supplies to the church to facilitate aid to these areas so people will understand that this aid is coming from the ministry and care of Thai Baptists.

Scenes of tragedy
Krabi, a small town in Thailand still balancing in the transition between sleepy fishing village and full-blown tourist haven, has become the central sorting station for the bodies of foreign tourists killed in the tragedy. Dozens of resorts — both plush and rustic — are a short distance from Krabi. The scene takes on an element of the surreal as workers and volunteers work in an almost mechanical, trance-like state.

Schools and Buddhist temples have been transformed into morgues. Rows of bodies lay shielded from the tropical heat by tents. Proper body bags are nowhere to be seen — corpses are wrapped in plastic and tied at both ends. The numbered bags are swollen from the heat.

An announcement over a loudspeaker breaks the hushed silence. Rescue workers digging at the idyllic resort island of Koh Phi Phi have found another 400 bodies. One hundred would be arriving at the temple within an hour.

Pictures of the corpses are posted on bulletin boards in the parking lot. Family members, friends, traveling companions and co-workers looking for the dead peer at the pictures, looking past the ghastly faces of death and rapid decomposition to try to identify the missing.

Nakamura, a tall, thin Japanese man, breathed behind a surgical mask as Thai workers opened a body bag in front of him. The corpse was a child. A tour operator based in Singapore, Nakamura had flown down to Krabi to help a Singaporean family find their daughter. It was her, he nodded grimly.

If a body is identified, only then will the bag be lifted into the rough coffin and taken away — either to be cremated locally or shipped to a home country.

I would say it’s very likely that most of the foreign dead will go into mass graves, says Julian, who surveyed the makeshift morgue as part of his assessment.

For the majority, death occurred at the beach, and people were not carrying their passports. By the time relatives and friends arrive to locate their loved ones, it will be too difficult in these conditions to identify the body, he said.

Next steps
In Thailand, which until the tsunami was a country gaining notoriety for growing religious violence between the Muslim minority in the south and the Buddhist majority, the government has called for Dec. 31 to be a national day of prayer. Many New Year’s Eve celebrations have been cancelled or turned into fund-raisers for the victims of the devastation.

Officials and relief organizations in Thailand are beginning to voice the understanding that the death toll will rise significantly from post-disaster disease due to contaminated water supplies — the primary carrier of cholera.

At the makeshift morgue, the number of bodies continues to grow. If they put all the dead bodies here [in Krabi], they won’t be able to handle it. They’ll have a secondary disaster on their hands, Julian observes. They need a lot of prayer.

“As Christians, we need to let every opportunity be one to show the love of God for those affected [by this tragedy],” says Dusit. “As a native of Krabi, I feel so thankful and grateful for those who share this concern. There are only a few churches here. Practically, we have very limited resources. But when we all come together we can become much more powerful and effective.”

*Name changed for security reasons

BP News and other newswire services contributed to this article.
Published by Keener Communications Group, January 2005

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