Clean Water – Drinking water & purification equipment
Survivors may have little clean water or sanitation after Sunday’s 9.0 magnitude earthquake sent huge waves from Malaysia to Africa.
- BBC World News, 12/27/04
Indonesian rescue workers pulled hundreds of bodies from treetops, rivers and wrecked homes in Aceh province, desperate to clean up before disease could spread from rotting bodies polluting water supplies.
- Reuters, 12/27/04
The international Red Cross said it was concerned about waterborne diseases like malaria and cholera.
- NBC News, 12/27/04
“The biggest threat to survivors is from the spread of infection through contamination of drinking water and putrefying bodies left by the receding waters,” Jamie McGoldrick of the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told reporters Monday.
- MSNBC, 12/27/04
Clothing & Blankets
Many had run to higher ground with only the clothes on their back, and only to come back to muddy plains where their homes once stood. Much of the region usually sees high temperatures and during the monsoons suffer from heavy rains.
In many communities survivors have no choice but to sleep on the muddy streets. Millions trying to cope in the aftermath have been left with nothing: no homes, no food, no clothes and no means of communication.
- CBC News, 12/27/04
Shelter
The giant waves also left thousands injured and missing as well as hundreds of thousands homeless in Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
- CNN World, 12/27/04
In Sri Lanka alone, 1.5 million people were homeless and authorities in other countries said vast numbers of people had been displaced and had to search for shelter.
- Reuters, 12/27/04
Medicine & Medical equipment
In many places, there is little left of hospitals and medical supplies.
Typhoid, diarrhea and hepatitis epidemics now pose the gravest threat to survivors, international relief agencies said.
- Reuters, 12/27/04
Seed Money
The head of the United Nations’ emergency humanitarian relief agency said the tsunamis were unprecedented and that it could take years to rebuild some places that were wiped out.
- CNN World, 12/27/04
“We cannot fathom the cost of these poor societies and the nameless fishermen and fishing villages and so on that have just been wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of livelihoods have gone,” Egeland told reporters.
- MSNBC, 12/27/04
Relief Money
UN emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland said the relief operation would probably cost “many billions of dollars”.
- BBC World, 12/27/04
Struggling with destroyed communications, power outages and swamped and debris-strewn roads, emergency workers were shocked by the sheer scale of the catastrophe.
- Reuters, 12/27/04
A massive appeal for aid is to be launched in the next few days. Mr. Egeland expressed concern, however, that several rich donor countries are becoming less generous, even as needs continue to grow.
- VOA News, 12/27/04
