The
crane is straining. The massive fishing boat swings in the air
on steel ropes, hanging between golden beach and blue sky.
The tsunami waves tossed heavy wooden vessels ashore on 26 December
like paper boats. Now they lie stranded, scattered over the
whole beach. Many of them are now wrecks, the heavy planks of
their wooden hulls shattered by rocks.
One day maybe some of the boats will sail again. The crane starts
with the clearing up.
I return to the car and continue the journey south towards Galle.
To left and right lie the remnants of the disaster. Sometimes
all that remains are heaps of stones. I am reminded that fishing
huts used to stand here one month ago.
But there is not only destruction to see. Everywhere along the
coast of Sri Lanka, people are clearing up and sometimes even
rebuilding.
Fires burn beside the roads: mattresses, splintered timber and
broken furniture are transformed into ash. From the debris,
the tsunami victims collect what is useful for reconstruction:
roofing tiles, stones and corrugated sheet. Neighbours help
each other.
And the aid workers of the Red Cross lend a hand. At the next
stop the sun already beats down from the sky. Sweat runs down
of the faces of 25 Red Cross volunteers from Bentota.
"Straight after the tsunami disaster I joined the Red Cross.
Now I clear up the rubble with my friends,, says a 23-year old.
In the background a wrecked house rises up into the sky. The
tidal wave shattered the timber roof like matches, tearing away
furniture, windows, doors, everything.
Red Cross workers, many young, push squeaking wheelbarrows along
the affected coastline. They provide first aid, clean salted
wells, distribute humanitarian goods or transport clean drinking
water.
The disaster has tapped into the humanitarian spirit and the
number of Red Cross volunteers has increased, a fact Vpali Sirimanne
is proud of. He is the honorary Red Cross chairman in the district
of Bentota.
He used to work as a full-time diving instructor. Before the
tsunami, he ran his own equipment and boat rental business.
The wave destroyed everything.
Not far away a Red Cross truck stands next to the road delivering
water. The pump is roaring, filling up a black plastic tank.
The village inhabitants line up with cans and buckets. Clean
drinking water is essential to avoid the outbreak of diseases
and epidemics.
I think of my German Red Cross friends in Pottuvil, where I’m
heading. They prepare 120,000 litres of drinking water every
day, supplying camps for the homeless. Then there are the two
basic health care centres run by the Finnish and French Red
Cross Societies.
The tsunami has brought me back in touch with colleagues from
other missions. Dieter Mathes is the leader of the German Red
Cross emergency response unit, an aid worker with decades of
experience, and Konrad Kerpa, whom I met last year in the Iranian
city of Bam, which was transformed in seconds into a sea of
rubble exactly one year before the tsunami.
The city of Pottuvil looms. It forms a particularly sad chapter
in my mission to Sri Lanka. The former surfers’ paradise
is now only a field of ruins. Thousands died here. I will never
forget the terrible sight of numerous corpses floating in the
water.
The bridge linking the city centre and the former tourist area
was destroyed. The German Red Cross team manages to get water
over the destroyed bridge using a hose more than 700 metres
long.
The German Red Cross also operates a field hospital in the north
of the country and is one of several National Societies working
in close cooperation with the Sri Lanka Red Cross, the International
Federation and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
My journey continues. The road is hopelessly overcrowded.
A railway track – or rather what remains of it - runs
parallel to the road. The waves bent the rails like play-dough.
Nearby an iron rail hangs over a palm trunk.
I come to the town of Tellwatte. The place looks like it a bomb
site. What’s left of the train station stands amid the
rubble, its walls partly washed away. Villagers have set up
a Buddha statue on a broken roof, lost between the remains.
Behind the station a reddish-brown train comes into view. Over
1,400 people died when the wave hit the wagons, tearing the
carriages apart. Heavy equipment has set the death train back
on its track.
The bodies of the dead have been recovered, but still there
are sad reminders.
In front of the wagon lies a small doll, its legs ripped off.
Its painted eyes staring at the sky. The girl who played with
the doll is dead. Hers was one of the 40,000 lives claimed by
the tsunami disaster in Sri Lanka. It is a figure that is difficult
to comprehend.
Red Cross and Red Crescent planes and ships have brought tons
of goods to the vulnerable. The first new houses are appearing
while others are being reconstructed. “The acute emergency
phase is over, reconstruction can start", says Axel Pawolek,
leader of the Federation’s field assessment team.
One month on, it is still hard for me to grasp the extent of
the disaster. If it is difficult for me as a visitor to this
country, imagine how hard it is for the innocent, bewildered
victims such as children.
In a few minutes the world they knew was washed away. Beloved
ones will never return.
There are wounds you cannot see, and it will take a long time
to heal them. It is set another challenge for the Red Cross/Red
Crescent.
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A
crane worker works on a beach as boats left stranded by
the tsunami are cleared (p12542)
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Sislan
Fernando, 75, in the remains of her wrecked fishing house.
She one of the hundreds of thousands of people trying
to put their shattered lives back together (p12544)
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The
clean up: a Sri Lanka Red Cross volunteer tosses debris
onto a fire (p12543)
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A
doll belonging to a little girl killed in the Tellwatte
train tragedy. Some 1,400 lives were lost when the tsunami
hit the train (p12545)
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This
German Red Cross water and sanitation unit near Pottuvil
is producing 120,000 litres of clean drinking water a
day (p12546)
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