BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — The massive relief effort for millions driven from their homes by Asia’s tsunami disaster bogged down in distribution bottlenecks, as the threat of rampant disease in refugee camps emerged yesterday as a leading fear among aid workers. The death toll surpassed 127,000.
The $500 million aid campaign accelerated, as the first of many C-130 cargo planes and warships reached their destinations in ravaged nations with tons of blankets, bottled water, plastic sheeting and medicines.
Convoys distributed sugar, rice and lentils in Sri Lanka; India dispatched a ship converted into a 50-bed hospital.
But with infrastructure troubles — bureaucratic delays, tsunami-disrupted delivery systems and other factors — blocking much of the aid from reaching the needy, the threat of disease always hanging over major disaster zones moved to the fore as a top concern. Some 5 million survivors were homeless or injured.
In the Andaman islands, a remote southern Indian archipelago, relief operations have been limited to Indian officials and local volunteers who have struggled to deliver tons of rations, clothes, bed sheets, oil, and other items, hampered by lack of transportation. Many villagers alleged that relief was reaching the islands but was being hoarded by local officials. “There is starvation. People haven’t had food or water for at least five days. There are carcasses. There will be an epidemic,” said Manoranjan Bhakta, the lawmaker for Andaman in the federal Parliament.
Western health officials, including a 30-person team from US Army, Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy personnel, headed to devastated areas across Sri Lanka yesterday after officials warned about possible disease outbreaks among the 1 million people seeking shelter in crowded refugee centers.
“Our biggest battle and fear now is to prevent an epidemic from breaking out,” said Health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva. “Clean water and sanitation is our main concern.”
Death counts across the region from Sunday’s tsunami, triggered by a powerful 9-magnitude earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, continued to grow. More than 127,000 people were reported dead around Southern Asia and as far away as Somalia on Africa’s eastern coast.
In the hardest-hit country, Indonesia, officials began to acknowledge that the death toll might never be known with certainty, since towering waves on Sunday swept entire villages — and their inhabitants — out to sea. The country’s official death toll stood at about 80,000, but Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supadi said it could reach 100,000.
Sri Lanka reported about 28,500 deaths and India more than 13,000. A total of more than 300 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya.
Teams of forensic experts in Thailand packed bodies in dry ice as the government announced its death toll in the tsunami disaster had doubled to more than 4,500 people, almost half of them foreigners, and hopes faded that more survivors would be found.
But the tactical challenges of distributing the world’s largest relief effort were apparent in the Indonesian city of Medan — the key distribution point for aid to Aceh province, the area worst affected by the disaster.
Thousands of boxes filled with drinking water, crackers, blankets and other basic necessities were piled high inside an airplane hangar in Medan, 450 kilometers (280 miles) from the province’s capital, Banda Aceh. UN and other aid officials predicted it would be days or longer before agencies could begin full-scale operations.
“It will take at least two weeks for us to have the people and equipment we need here,” said relief worker Aigor Lacomba, who arrived yesterday in Banda Aceh and works for a consortium of European aid groups.
Survivors, meanwhile, struggled in deteriorating conditions on the ground.
“How are we going to live? We have nothing anymore,” Darmidi, a 43-year-old refugee, said as his wife washed their 2-year-old son in a bucket in Banda Aceh, where the streets reeked of rotting corpses.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday that nations had donated $500 million toward the relief effort, but more help was needed. While the money started rolling in, militaries across the globe also geared up to help. A US aircraft carrier battle group was steaming to Sumatra.
C-130 cargo planes touched down in Indonesia with blankets, medicine and the first of 80,000 body bags. New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Pakistan and scores of other nations also had planes in the air, rushing aid to victims.
