COLACHAL, Tamil Nadu — Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh yesterday joined the front line of relief efforts in areas devastated by giant waves, amid a huge deployment of troops, ships and aircraft ferrying aid.
Dr. Singh, who has called the disaster a “national calamity”, visited Colachal and flew over nearby Nagapattinam to monitor relief operations, officials said.
The three areas of southern India bore the brunt of Sunday’s tsunami, which was triggered by a powerful undersea earthquake off Indonesia.
The catastrophe left about 119,000 people dead in Asia with five million displaced. In India, 11,330 were killed and 870,000 others were affected, according to official figures.
The government said the worst hit was Tamil Nadu state and neighboring Pondicherry with 7,330 killed. The district of Nagapattinam was the worst hit in Tamil Nadu with 4,332 dead.
On the Andaman and Nicobar islands at least 4,000 are dead, according to police who said 3,000 more are missing.
The streets of Nagapattinam district were clogged with ambulances, trucks and trolleys carrying drinking water, clothes, utensils and medicines.
At the central relief center in Nagapattinam, thousands of aid workers dressed in khakis were working in shifts round-the-clock. Doctors and medical teams arrived from neighboring districts and immediately started checking survivors.
Emergency medical camps have been set up by the Indian Red Cross, government and private agencies.
To bring some order to the relief effort, a US-based technology company rushed a team of experts to Nagapattinam to install a management information system.
“The IBM experts are installing a complete system for all rehabilitation centers to get us critical data every day,” Vivek Harinarain, zonal relief commissioner, told reporters at Nagapattinam.
The system will use police radio sets to gather calls for aid and log it onto software for tracking purposes to set priorities and respond with supplies to the most needed sites quicker, Harinarain said.
About 73,000 people who fled their villages have taken shelter in about 73 relief camps in the city, said District Revenue Officer M. Murthy.
More that 50 government and private agencies are involved in the mammoth relief operations aided by the army.
Urgent relief efforts were also under way in the Andaman and Nicobar islands in the Indian Ocean, officials in the capital Port Blair said.
Medical teams had fanned out to 20 badly hit islands and a naval ship had arrived at Car Nicobar island laden with relief materials.
Schools in Port Blair had been turned into shelters for thousands evacuated from other islands such as Great Nicobar, Little Andaman and Car Nicobar.
The air force, meanwhile, was airdropping food and medicines to three southern islands, including Chowra, where a senior coast guard official on Tuesday reported about 1,000 people dead, bringing the Andaman death toll to 4,000.
The remote archipelago of 572 islands lies 1,200 km from mainland India and is spread over 800 km from north to south.
Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee said Wednesday India had deployed 4,000 troops and a fleet of ships and aircraft carrying hundreds of tons of relief material for survivors of the killer tidal waves.
He said 25 aircraft, 30 helicopters and 30 ships laden with relief material and 4,000 troops of the Indian armed services had been pressed into service.
On Monday the Indian government announced five billion rupees ($114 million) for relief work and earmarked another two billion rupees to rebuild rural housing.
It said it did not immediately need massive foreign aid despite offers from several countries. “All friendly nations have offered help but we feel we do have the resources to handle the situation. If at a later stage we feel we need assistance we will not hesitate to ask,” said a government official on Wednesday.
— Additional input from AFP
