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'Save each and every one'
01/01/2005 20:30 - (SA)
Banda Aceh - Aid pledges for Asia's tsunami victims topped 1.6 billion dollars on Saturday on a tide of New Year sympathy, but the United Nations warned it would take weeks for help to reach many survivors and that the death toll would likely rise to 150 000.
While the confirmed death toll from the catastrophe edged towards 126 000, relief operations were stalled by flash floods that submerged at least 15 camps in Sri Lanka and a strong aftershock hit close to the epicentre of the December 26 quake which triggered the tsunamis.
In worst-hit Indonesia, US Navy helicopters bringing emergency rations were greeted by desperately hard-hit communities clamouring for food in Aceh as the president ordered aid to be expedited to isolated areas.
"Immediately channel this aid," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told soldiers as he surveyed a major backlog of aid that has built up at the airport in Banda Aceh, the nearly levelled capital of Aceh province.
"Do your duties as well as possible, day and night. We have the obligation to save each and every one," Yudhoyono said.
But the chief of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Indonesia, Michael Elmquist, said a myriad coordination and infrastructure problems was making it impossible to deliver aid quickly.
"It's going to take weeks before we get out to all the isolated areas," Elmquist said from Jakarta after returning from Aceh's capital of Banda Aceh.
The world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years that triggered the tsunamis has set off a chain reaction of donations, with governments and the public racing to contribute to help the millions of homeless.
"We are now counting new pledges by the hour. We're now between 1.1 billion and 1.2 billion dollars," the UN's emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, told reporters in New York.
New Year's celebrations in much of the world were muted or turned into fund-raisers, with Sydney's fireworks show alone generating more than $850 000 for the disaster appeal.
Indonesia's westernmost Aceh province, considered the ground zero of the tsunami destruction, continues to be shaken by major aftershocks, with three measuring 5.0 or above on the Richter scale recorded overnight and another on Saturday measuring between 6.4 and 7.0 on the Richter scale.
In southern Sri Lanka, foreigners caught up in the tsunami have been pitching in to the mammoth effort to clean up the island, which fears for the future of its lucrative tourism industry.
Britons Ian and Anna Betts said locals and tourists have been paying themselves for diesel and drivers to get private earthmovers to shift the rubbish from the streets due to a dire lack of official assistance.
"All this money they say on the news is being donated, it's not getting down here. They could use any trucks. Where are the trucks? Where's the food?" Ian Betts asked.
- AFP
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