Complete Coverage: The tsunami

Much left to do in tsunami recovery

Six months after a tsunami hit South Asia, reconstruction has been slow, with many families still living in camps, said the head of an international relief group yesterday.

Children of the tsunami struggle to move on

Arulmozhi cannot get thoughts of her mother's death out of her head.

Shaken by a life swept away

When Kavita Kulandiran sleeps, she dreams of her children. But when she wakes up in the tin hut that is now her home, she remembers. The tsunami that struck on Dec. 26 took her son, Delakshan, 8, and daughter Saduvja, 4, sweeping their small bodies into the nearby jungle or out to sea.

Giving trickles off

Two months after horrifying images of the Dec. 26 tsunami spread round the world, Americans have donated $940 million to organizations responding to the disaster in southern Asia, but the pace of donations appears to have slowed.

Amid disaster, a refuge

Two months after a tidal wave slammed into the coasts of Southeast Asia, sweeping away thousands of lives and homes, the activity level at the Nassau and Suffolk Red Cross chapters and other tsunami relief agencies has quieted after the rush of donations.

'Relief squad' returns to LI from Indonesia

Greg Dinin and his father, Usman, never expected to be a two-man tsunami relief squad. But by the time they returned to their Long Island homes last week, they had fed 280 families, relocated surviving relatives and bought a fishing boat for their cousins to resume a livelihood in the battered Indonesian village where Usman Dinin grew up.

Livelihoods washed away

Like his father and grandfather before him, Sulaiman, a subsistence farmer, has spent most of his life cultivating his small rice paddy. Though he earned virtually nothing, he took pleasure in knowing that the vivid green stalks shooting through the luminous water would feed his family of four.

Newsday pulls ads from Hot 97 show

Bowing to pressure from an Asian community group, Newsday is pulling its advertising from the controversial morning show on hip-hop radio station Hot 97.

Scientists say E. Coast vulnerable to tsunamis

The East Coast of the United States, with no advance warning system or equipment to detect a giant wave in the Atlantic Ocean, remains extremely vulnerable to tsunamis like the one that devastated Southeast Asia on Dec. 26, a group of scientists warned Tuesday.

Moms-to-be in need of homes, supplies, funds

Surgical scissors scavenged from a beach are midwife Revita's lone tool for delivering babies at a camp for tsunami survivors in the jungles of northern Sumatra.

Indonesia, rebels continue clashes

The armed rebels huddled in the drizzle in their remote mountain hideout, a cluster of bamboo platforms and tattered tarps in a mosquito-infested jungle.

For two, tsunami joke is a swan song

Hot 97's tsunami song has sunk two station employees.

Nearly 5,000 more tsunami victims buried

Workers buried more tsunami victims in Aceh province Sunday as a premature end to cease-fire talks between the Indonesian government and separatist rebels dampened hopes for a quick resolution to a 30-year-old conflict in the devastated province.

Tsunami bringing long list of profiteers

For those looking to make a buck, Indonesian entrepreneur Sigip Samsu has some advice: head to tsunami-wrecked Sumatra. He rushed there after the disaster and hasn't stopped reaping the benefits of a land in need of plenty.

Amid death in Indonesia, tending to living

Over the past month, Azmi Umur has buried nearly 40,000 bodies in a mass grave on the outskirts of this provincial capital. He's become so adept that it takes him just five minutes to scoop up a dozen corpses with his backhoe, drop them into pits filled with greenish water, and cover them with dirt.

When relief fights belief

The barefoot children and old men run past the few shacks still standing in this tsunami-struck village, eager to meet the U.S. Navy H-60 Seahawk as it whirrs onto a patch of earth.

Feast day mired in mourning

Last year, street vendor Buyung Abdullah and his family celebrated Islam's holiest and happiest day by feasting on spicy curry and sweet cookies in their cozy shack, dressing their children in spiffy new clothes and visiting an array of relatives.

Survivors of 10 villages destroyed by tsunami face uncertain future

What's left of the fishing hamlet of Ujong Muloh has moved - to the one-room library of Lamno Public High School.

Raising bar on kindness for tsunami relief effort

Beaming from ear to ear, Muriel Fass held court yesterday in the back of the lobby of her Melville nursing home, the very same spot she camped out every day for a week and a half following the tsunami disaster in southeast Asia.

Cool @ Night

Lesser-known bands play for tsunami relief

Superstars always get a chance to help. Madonna, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder and others lent their support to NBC's telethon to aid victims of the tsunami. Bjork will release an album of remixes as a fund-raiser. Green Day is offering proceeds from its latest single. And the list goes on.

U.S. military says it will scale back tsunami relief efforts immediately

The U.S. military -- the largest group helping tsunami survivors -- will immediately start withdrawing troops from the relief efforts to feed and house more than 1 million refugees, the U.S. Pacific commander said Thursday.

Journey to homeland of despair

The bridge leading to Mirror Beach, a popular fishing spot known for its placid waters, could have been any ordinary crossing, were it not for the railings ripped from either side. Hundreds of terrorized residents, many of them mothers clutching young children, had clung to those metal guards when the tsunami struck, but the waves proved too strong and too high.

Indonesia begins anti-malaria spraying

Masked workers with mosquito-killing spray guns began moving through refugee camps Friday in tsunami-battered Aceh province, trying to prevent an outbreak of malaria. Indonesia, meanwhile, said it is pursuing a permanent truce with rebels in the area, the worst-hit by the disaster.

Troop escorts ordered for tsunami aid workers

Indonesia on Thursday ordered foreign aid workers in tsunami-devastated Aceh province to have military escorts in areas facing violence by insurgents, even as the vice president welcomed a cease-fire offer by the rebels. The total death toll from the disaster rose to more than 157,000.

Asia Disaster

Amid devastation, signs of life return

MEULABOH, Indonesia -- Amid the haunting reminders of loss here along the coast of north Sumatra, reminders of life are reappearing too.

Rescued tsunami victim thanks Allah

Lying prone on the bobbing wooden plank, Ari Afrizal looked left and saw the fiery red sun dipping into the watery horizon. Weakly, he turned his face the other way and saw a pearly white full moon rising in the east.

Understanding nature's power

HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka - Not long after losing 24 relatives, including his wife and three of his four children, Mohammad Sumanthra Jainudeen stood over the freshly made grave of his 16-year-old daughter and proclaimed that he was very happy.

Mission: Save the children

It was a typical children's exercise: Take a blank sheet of paper and a pile of crayons, and draw what you like. But the children were survivors of the Dec. 26 tsunami, and their pictures offered Crayola-colored images of some of the frightening memories lingering in their young minds.

South Asia trip takes on dual significance

Two local congressmen will travel to South Asia this week to survey tsunami relief efforts and review anti-terror measures at the world's largest seaport.

Storm-battered nation a model of preparedness

Walls of water knocked out roads for miles and entire communities were swept away. It took months to bury the bodies of as many as 500,000 men, women and children, who in a matter of hours had succumbed to the 30-foot tidal surges.

UN food agency will feed 2 million a day

Rescue workers pulled thousands more rotting corpses from the mud and debris of flattened towns along the Sumatran coast Saturday, two weeks after surging walls of water caused unprecedented destruction on the shores of the Indian Ocean. The death toll in 11 countries passed 150,000.

Indonesia finds 7,000 more bodies in remote area; death toll passes 147,000

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the devastation on tsunami-battered Sumatra island Friday as the worst he's ever seen, and authorities raised Indonesia's death toll by 7,000, bringing the overall total killed by the disaster to more than 147,000.

Web sites lend their names to tsunami aid

In the days following Christmas, Elliot Goykhman was keen enough to know that the huge surge in traffic to his company's Web site likely had little to do with a sudden overwhelming interest in the firm's computer consulting services.

Asia Disaster

At Phillips seafood, tsunamis hit close to home

In devastated villages of southeast India yesterday, the head of Phillips Foods Inc.'s India division spent the day on a truck, delivering rice and water. The head of Phillips in Thailand did the same, in Thai fishing villages where the homes of Phillips employees were washed away.

Midshipmen caught in the waves

As their container ship crept into the port at Salalah, Oman, on Dec. 26, crewmen David Taliaferro and Kyle Bockelman watched as the tide plunged 15 feet in five minutes. Then weird, 50-foot wide whirlpools broke out all around the Maersk Virginia. The waves lifted their vessel and ran it aground on rocks.

Who’s giving what

In the wake of President George W. Bush's initial offers of first $15 million and then $35 million to aid victims of the South Asia tsunami, a United Nations official accused the United States and other rich countries last week of being "stingy." It angered U.S. officials but experts say it wasn't necessarily wrong.

Corporations add to tsunami relief

As the scope of the devastation from the tsunami disaster increases, so are the relief contributions from corporate America, with dozens more companies this week signing their name to the list of donors.

'COMPETITIVE COMPASSION'

In what appears like a bidding war, the U.S. and other countries seem to keep upping the ante in disaster aid

After what some regard as a slow start to the disaster relief effort, the United States and other countries have launched what appears to be a bidding war, seemingly upping the ante each day.

Asia Disaster

Need for careful rebuilding also applies to young souls

KILINOCHCHI, Sri Lanka - On the last day of their lives, the friends and playmates of 11-year-old Kirishanthini were at an orphanage overlooking a peaceful lagoon near the sea.

Long-term aid a concern

Since landing in Sri Lanka to join aid workers from dozens of other relief agencies responding to last week's tsunami, Mercy Corps' Cassandra Nelson has learned that the island nation has too many doctors and not enough fishing boats.

Asia Disaster

New aid bottleneck is emerging at hospitals

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Haggard and dehydrated survivors of Asia's tsunami catastrophe flooded hospitals in the disaster zone yesterday, posing a new challenge for the global relief operation.

Reading winds, waves help Indian islanders

Two days after a tsunami thrashed the island where his ancestors have lived for tens of thousands of years, a lone tribesman stood naked on the beach and looked up at a hovering coast guard helicopter.

Family recalls tsunami terror

In the living room of his Lido Beach home Monday, 13-year-old Rohan Sahai shrugged off questions about his brush with a horrible death, eager to return to the solitude of his bedroom and strum his guitar rather than tell of escaping the water just moments before last week's massive tsunami hit Phuket Island in Thailand.

Disaster's impact felt by rich and poor

They were doctors, fishermen, bank managers and retirees. They lived in drafty shacks on the sea and in solidly built houses set so far back from the beach that they couldn't see the water.

Babylon teacher recalls tsunami, plans to help village

On the morning of Dec. 28, Damika, a Sri Lankan in his late 30s, returned to his modest guest house in the beach town of Unawatuna to learn his father, uncle and brother had died in the tsunami. He buried them there, then hiked a mile down a beach road to check on the Westerners, including Laura Dunham, a tourist from Babylon.

Give, but wisely

Last week's tsunami-related disaster has seen one of the largest outpourings of American philanthropy since the Sept. 11 attacks, when charity appeals seemed to be rivaled only by attempts to scam people out of money.

babylon

Radio station adds to bracelet fund

The efforts of two Babylon families to raise funds for tsunami victims by selling yarn bracelets has paid off: New York City radio station Q104.3 has offered to match the $1,000 they've raised so far.

NBC to air live aid special

Echoing the live TV aid specials that aired in the wake of Sept. 11, NBC Universal yesterday announced that an hourlong special to benefit Asian tsunami survivors will air across the company's various cable and broadcast networks on Jan. 15.

U.S. tsunami relief effort gains speed

A massive American military relief operation picked up steam on Monday with U.S. helicopters dropping off cartons of food aid in Sumatra and U.S. warships with 2,200 Marines arriving in the Malacca Straits to begin ferrying supplies to the tsunami-battered island.

babylon

Families string up wave of support

John Bingham and his wife, Agnes Dupre La Tour, were sitting around with their four sons wondering what they could do to help survivors of Asia's tsunami disaster. Make and sell candles? Collect clothes?

A diver's account from the sea

Scuba diving off the coast of Thailand on Sunday morning, Jason Heller felt the water pulling him deeper and out to sea.

Deaths top 120,000; $500 million pledged

Relief workers in northern Sumatra have begun collecting and burying thousands of anonymous corpses -- a task that has spiked the death toll from Sunday's earthquake and tsunamis to more than 120,000.

When the ocean entered their room

This was their annual "chill" holiday, that time each winter when Paul and Mary Sandys left the cold of Galway, Ireland, and headed somewhere warm. But yesterday, in mismatched garb grabbed in desperation after their hotel room became a churning washing machine Sunday, they were just trying to get home.

$550M in aid pledged so far

The world has responded with pledges of $550 million in aid for the victims of Sunday's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, according to the United Nations. Western leaders, meanwhile, squabbled over the relative generosity of their contributions.

Database helps pinpoint greatest need

Facing a multitude of challenges on the ground, tsunami relief workers are finding assistance in some high-tech views from above.

OBSTACLES OF LAND, OF LOSS

Aid workers struggle with devastation to families or places they've called home for years while battling elements to continue their work

Aid agencies hoping to bring tsunami relief to the Indian Ocean basin are finding themselves up against a wall of obstacles - no airstrips or roads on which to land their planes, no local sources for procuring relief supplies, and local employees traumatized by losses of their own families, agency officials said yesterday.

CATASTROPHE IN SOUTHERN ASIA

Sumatra's West Coast Devastated

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — The first survivors from an isolated area of the Sumatran coast were airlifted Thursday to the provincial capital, where they described a horrendous scene in which floodwaters covered a vast swath of land and probably killed more than half of one city's 100,000 people.

Huge wave flung train like a toy

The fisherman has helped find 1,500 bodies where he once lived, near the train cars thrown from the tracks and the remainders of people's lives, from brick walls to business cards.

A town destroyed

The last time M.G. Wejetunge spoke to his daughter, she had telephoned him from a stalled train and urged him not to be concerned. The water was not too high, 25-year-old Lanka Chandima told him Sunday as she sat in the carriage watching the sea slosh around her knees.

Supply efforts are stymied; deaths near 80,000

Mudslides and downed bridges blocked relief supplies from regions near the epicenter of Sunday's earthquake for a fourth straight day yesterday, isolating hundreds of thousands of Indonesians and raising fears that large numbers of the displaced could die from starvation or disease.

AFTER THE STORM

Little food and medicine in Sumatra

For four days, northern Sumatra -- the virtual ground zero of Sunday's disaster -- has lain as silent as a tomb.

THE FOLD

The wave's deadly aftermath

Coastlines in 12 nations were ripped apart, as many as 77,000 people lost their lives and up to four times that number may have been injured by the tsunamis that struck Sunday.

KEEPING PEACE IN A LAND OF DESPAIR

Former LI social worker on a peacekeeping mission in war-torn Sri Lanka holds hope reconstruction will outlast disaster's impact

For three decades, longtime Islip resident Thomas Brinson was haunted by his experience as a soldier in Vietnam. He had raised money for an orphanage there and befriended some orphans who were later killed or maimed during crossfire amid the Tet Offensive.

AID GROUPS SAY 1 ITEM WILL HELP MOST: CASH

Donated supplies too cumbersome and costly to ship, say embassy officials and relief organizations

To those compelled to do something to help victims of Sunday's earthquake and tsunami, government and relief agency officials have a simple message: Send money.

LURKING HEALTH DANGERS

Dire need for drinking water

Access to clean drinking water is now the biggest single factor in determining whether Sunday's tsunamis will claim yet more victims, health officials said yesterday. But they warned that widespread damage to sanitation systems and the overcrowded conditions of temporary settlements springing up throughout southern Asia are adding to the risk of disease outbreak.

TSUNAMI DISASTER

Amateur video playing greater role

Television stations usually have to scramble for footage when disasters strike, sometimes playing the same short clip in an endless loop.

CATASTROPHE IN SOUTHERN ASIA

Relief Efforts Quicken Amid Grief

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Cargo planes carrying tons of relief supplies landed Wednesday in this wreck of a city, only to pile up at the airport for lack of trucks, gasoline and a distribution system. Half a world away, President Bush defended the U.S. response to the earthquake and tsunami that claimed at least 77,000 lives across 12 nations.

Boy, 2, reunited with dad after tsunami

A Swedish toddler was reunited with his father Wednesday, days after being found alone in the aftermath of the deadly tsunami that swept Asia.