The trickle of moisture dripping down a rock has become a drinking water supply at this city-turned-refugee camp. It's also the shower. And the trash dump.
Tsunami victims from all around the ruined city of Calang, 110km south of Banda Aceh, have been arriving daily to a growing settlement that local officials say has swelled to some 7,000 survivors.
PHOTO: EPA
Refugees are rigging leftover pieces of corrugated metal to branches to create makeshift cabins, sheltering their families on the hillsides ringing this former fishing town where not a single building was left standing after the tsunami hit Dec. 26.
But as the camp grows, one consideration left behind has been sanitation and preserving clean sources of water, meaning conditions such as diarrhea are becoming rampant and raising the threat of other diseases, doctors here say.
US Navy and other helicopters have been running regular flights to Calang to ferry in supplies. Children play in the now-gentle waves alongside two Indonesian navy amphibious ships sitting on the shoreline with aid and a clinic -- one of three now located here. The city's own 10 doctors all died in the tsunami.
Aid supplies in the city itself now aren't the problem, said Sya-frizal, logistics coordinator for the local government, standing next to heaps of donated clothes. It's getting the supplies to isolated areas nearby where helicopters or boats are the only means for carrying cargo -- severely limiting the amount of aid that can be delivered.
"We have some supplies, we have food here," said Syafrizal, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. "But we have problems with how to drop it to other camps."
If the aid won't come to the people, the people will come to the aid.
Sariffuddin Puteh, 32, came from the village of Tenom with nine other neighbors to gather supplies for the some 1,000 people left alive. He said helicopters came every day, but only brought biscuits one day or water and medicine the next -- meaning families are running low on rice.
"We never get rice," he said.
The tsunami victims arrive with only the clothes on their backs -- all they have left -- and are coping with the loss of dozens of neighbors and relatives in the area that suffered the brunt of the tsunami's wrath along the west coast of Indonesia's Sumatra Island.
The last thing on their minds when they make camp on whatever patch of ground is free from debris is keeping the decimated area clean.
Children fill water bottles from a pool of gray water, while the family across the dirt road said they used the same puddle for washing their dishes.
Up the hill at a well marked with a sign reading ``For cooking water only,'' Nilawati, 22, who is nine months pregnant, said she was filling a bucket for her 3-year-old son to drink -- not aware that bottled water was available just down the road.
Already, three quarters of the children at Calang have diarrhea, said Dr. Rick Brennan of US-based aid group International Rescue Committee (IRC), who was in the area for an aid assessment on Monday. All the water sources in Calang are contaminated and survivors haven't set up any latrines to make sure what's left isn't polluted further.
The lack of clean water raises the threat of waterborne diseases such as cholera, typhoid, dysentery and hepatitis, Brennan said.
IRC had been planning to send doctors to the Calang camp, but because there's already enough medical personnel they will now deploy a water and sanitation specialist.
Dr. Bidik Catur, an Indonesian military doctor, also noted that no one has any soap or any other hygienic items. Many survivors are also already suffering from protein deficiency.
Zulfian Achmal, head of Calang district, said a key item needed now is tents to house the arriving stream of refugees.
And the camp is set to get more crowded. Achmal said officials want to resettle survivors from the across the region to Calang where they can get more help.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia