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Aid reaches Aceh homeless on bleak New Year
Refugees in Indonesia's tsunami-devastated Aceh province woke up on New Year's Day to a depressing rain, but there were signs that critically needed aid was finally starting to reach them. On Friday supplies had begun pouring into the airport at the provincial capital Banda Aceh, but stacked up and were not being distributed to the nearly 110,000 made homeless by Sunday's massive earthquake and the powerful tsunami it triggered.
A huge bundle of donated second-hand clothes had been dropped off, and refugees were sorting through them. "These are clothes given to us by rich people. They came last night," said Zulkifli, a 65-year-old chili plantation worker wearing a sarong as he gleefully tried on a coat. His house was washed away by the disaster that killed at least 80,248 people in Aceh on the northern tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island. Officials say the toll may rise to 100,000. But while aid was now finally getting through to some of the needy after days of delay, many were still searching for help as the world saw in the new year. "This is no time for celebration. I am now going to another refugee camp because I hear there is a food supply there," disheveled survivor Armiah, 32, told Reuters as he walked in the town of Lhoknga, 20km (12.5 miles) to the west of Banda Aceh. Armiah lost his wife, mother and two brothers when the tsunami destroyed his home in the fishing village of Khueh, but managed to rescue his five-month-old son as he clung to a tree. "I haven't received anything yet. We have just been using what is left over (from the tsunami)," he said.
INNOCENCE LOST Nature itself continued to be unkind, with quake aftershocks overnight rattling homes and shelters, sending many people scurrying outside as early morning rain dampened spirits. "When it rains, it's so hard to sleep because the ground gets wet," said Nurlina, an eight-month pregnant 32-year-old mother of three, as her children clung to her legs. The shelters were inadequate to keep some goods and cardboard sleeping sheets from getting wet. Razali, 33, said there was enough food in the camp, but people needed medical help. "We need doctors. The children are sick, they have worms and fever." "The water is not clean. We drink and bathe there. Look, it's near the toilets," said Rafika, a 40-year-old mother of three.
A U.N. health official, who declined to be named, said aid workers were seeing a lot of infected injuries among children, respiratory tract illness, diarrhea and mothers struggling to feed their babies because they could not produce any milk. "The big problem here is that, compared to other disasters, the health system has collapsed -- there are just no local health workers," the official told Reuters. Budi Subianto, a UNICEF health official, said the affects of the tsunami on the children who survived would be "huge." "They have lost their sense of safeness," he told Reuters. Amid fears of an outbreak of highly infectious measles, aid agencies are trying to immunize every child in affected areas. "Not since the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 have we been hit so hard by the devastating wrath of nature," Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in a New Year's Eve speech, referring to a volcanic eruption and tsunami that killed 36,000. "We mourn, we cry, and our hearts weep, witnessing thousands of those killed left rigid in the streets. We witness those who survive almost losing hope and deep in sadness and confusion." The Indian Ocean quake and tsunami are estimated to have killed more than 124,000, with millions left homeless. "One has to be optimistic even in times like this. My house is destroyed, but at least all my family members survived, that gives hope," said Hasra, 24, a university student studying Islamic philosophy. |
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