Two sites worth a visit:

1. The Center for National Operations (cnosrilanka.org) in Sri Lanka is a powerful database-driven site maintained created by a private group of individuals, and now run by the Presidential Secretariat.

It covers many aspects of disaster operations in the country such as Water and Sanitation, Childcare, Logistics. Even an UN desk, and useful links. See this map of affected areas.

2. MapAction (http://www.mapaction.org) a UK-based international charity that assists in mapping of disaster areas. It uses satellite imagery, GIS and GPS. Want to see affected areas in Hambantota, or Galle? Check here.

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Should it take a calamity to make us empty our pockets and mobilize us into action? ‘Honky Tonk Woman,’ writing for the Sunday Leader newspaper in Sri Lanka says something most of us feel, but haven’t put it into words.

After such a tremendous disaster, you begin to realize the triviality of your problems. I’m very sorry to say it has become a kind of a contest with some folks, who like to make sure everyone knows how and what their contributions were to the relief effort. Let’s hope everyone will keep up the the level of enthusiasm over a longer period of time, for this effort has to be continued for a while in order to be successful. The real heroes/ heroines are those who work steadily and silently, they don’t even talk about it. They don’t feel the need for the whole world to know. I called up one of my oldest friends and told her I was proud to know her, she’s one such person. I know she doesn’t wait for tsunamis but always helps people and DOES NOT TALK about it.

I spoke to several people over the last few days who have amazing sories out of Sri Lanka, of Sri Lankans helping Sri Lankans all over the country. These private individuals who load their cars and double-cabs and make sorties into affected areas on work days and weekends. They don’t receive –and don’t care for- media attention. We can’t thank them enough

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Just to give you an idea of the force of the tsunami in Hambantota, here’s a telecom tower –or what’s left of it.

Andrew Samuel sent these pics and a comment:

These pics are of the city of Hambantota which is now fully bulldozed.
You will notice there are more vehicles to be cabled out of the mud and
water. This is a really sad site. The telecom tower has just crumbled down to
ball of metal.

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At Triton Hotel in Beruwala, several employees living in the area had their homes destroyed. These pictures, sent via Amanthi Dias Abeysinghe (whose dad is the General Manager of the hotel) tell their story. We visited Triton, a beautiful, sprawling beach resort, in June 2003, so I know exactly where these stories come from.

This picture shows you the hotel in the background.

And this one, how high the water has reached in the home.

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Lest we forget the truly amazing stories, I encourage you to please post your own here. Or email me here. I have 2 today:

A health club in California RoughFit is planning to collect money for the four families affected along the southwest coast of Sri Lanka. 

A Fulbright scholar Jeremy Gantz (from Cape Cod, Mass.) who had been in Sri lanka, is reportedly involved in relief work.

For the past three months he had been studying the history of Sri Lankan education and its connection to colonial and post-colonial political and economic developments! He had been on holiday in Thailand when the tsunami struck and he says “I felt fairly hedonistic on holiday in Thailand after learning of the tsunami… so flew back to Sri Lanka to help with the relief effort; my research feels very unimportant now”.

This was reported on the Relief For Sri Lanka blog, maintained by the Colombo Rotary Club.

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I have been getting mixed messages from people on visiting hard hit areas in the south and east. One of them –reinforced by some CNN coverage– is that Sri Lankans are coping well with the recovery and rellief efforts. I think there are different stories, and stories within stories, that the media cannot adequately get out, so before you make up your mind, read this from Ravi Ratnapala, a senior manager at Finlays, Colombo, who writes on a visit to Ampara and Kalmiunai. Rationing of food, shortages, monsoon rains etc make it still a very grim picture –at least as of last Thursday. Here is his story (with my emphasis).

Having left Colombo at 4.00am we reached Ampara at 7.00pm. This after we had problems with one of the vehicles along the way. The same evening we unloaded the supplies consigned to Ampara which did not appear to be badly hit. The next morning with the help of Sarvodaya we reached Kalmunai around 10.00 am. What we saw in Kalmunai was total devastation. The pictures tell the story. I have a movie which is too large to e.mail

In the Ampara District there are about 125 camps and Sarvodaya has taken over about 25 camps. There are supposed to be over 400,000 people in the camps in Ampara Distric alone. We visited a camp giving shelter to about 850 people and also visited the Ampara and Kalmunai Hospitals with medical supplies. The disposable surgical gowns (about 100) which we gave Kalmunai Hospital was most appreciated by them. Surgery at the Kalmunai Hospital has just recommenced.  The doctors appealed for water purification tablets as the water in the hospital is contaminated and fresh water supplies are limited. I think this is the same all over in the country and we should get some help from overseas if possible.

The approach road to the Sarvodaya Center in Kalmunai (washed away) was so bad that we had to stop the lorry and carry the supplies into the center. Infact the sea water had come into the Center in Kalmunai

Sarvodaya will be issung a coupon to the people in the camps and they will be given a weekly ration. The next big step is to get them back to the settlements. We left the eastern coast minutes ahead of flood waters as a result of the monsoon rains which had begun in the area.

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Arizona State University’s Professor Harendra Fernando went to Sri Lanka yesterday with a large research team from the U.S. to study the tsunami and refinine a model that will predict what parts of the country a tsunami would affect most.

See William Herman’s article "Prof takes expertise to disaster site" in the Arizona Republic of Sunday, Jan 9th, 2005.

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Rabbi Robert Kravitz, the Excutive Director of the American Jewish Commitee in Arizona said something that must put the popular misconception about Israeli aid being refused by Sri Lanka to rest.

He said that aid was never refused, and showed us a newspaper, the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix, which had it as a front page story. Check it out here. The story shows the picture on the left, of the Israeli army handing over aid to the Sri Lankan army. We build walls and rules in our world, he observed, but there are times when we must defy these rules and break down these walls, because we all belong to one human family.

Rabb Kravitz spoke at an inter-faith service for the family of Lal Fernando, a businessman in Arizona, whose wife lost several members of her family in Hambantota.

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I have had several pictures sent to me from people visiting the area and have to hold back several. These are just too grotesque to be published. Also, they bring up another issue voiced by a victim who said this (in a story sent me from Tyronne Paiva)

They talk as though they do everything here. Many people come here; they just take photographs, but we don’t get anything,” said Ramzan Mohideen, a man in a Muslim cap and gown who lost his jewelry business.

The story was about a visit by US senators to the southern region.

The picture above (via Andrew Samuel,) is particularly tragic -and not too graphic. An ice cream truck on the east coast.

This one, via DigitalGlobe, shows the tsunami on the South west coast of Kalutara –the area populated by several beach resorts, including Tangerine beach hotel.

Another, shows the wave receding.

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On Saturday –New Year’s Day– I rode in a large truck pulling a trailer loaded with some 40 boxes of donations from friends and family contacts in Arizona.

It all happened in a few days. Day 1: Tanu had made a few calls. I sent off a few emails. Sri Lanka Delight, the restaurant in LA (referred by the locals as the ‘Kade’) had said we could send a few boxes in a container leaving in a few days. Perhaps, we thought 3 big boxes wouldn’t be too expensive if we sent it via Fedex. But this was not to be. Day 2: People started arriving at our home dropping off boxes and large black bags of stuff, cans of food, bags of medicine, cases of infant formula, packs feeding bottles etc –so much so that we had to park our cars outside the garage. The fedex option was now out of the question.

Day 3: someone –in this amazing friend-of-a-friend network— came forward saying they had been praying for Sri Lanka and wondered how they could help. The husband had just got a new job at Microsoft. They offered to drive us in a huge Ford F250 with a trailer if we needed. We jumped at it, and continued to stack the garage.

Day 4: A TV station came a calling. Tanu refused to be on camera. We tried telling Channel 12 this was futile as the real story was all about them in Sri Lanka, and not about us. But if you know how the evening news works you know they want the sob story. I do appreciate their concern, but they stole a goood 2 hours of the day I had taken off from work. Packing and sorting takes time. ASU students come to help. A vendor nearby offered empty boxes. My British friend and his stepfather from 2 house up the street left their dinner to help us stack the boxes on the truck.

Day 5: 6.30 am, Don and Barbara Hiatt arrive at 6.30 am. The I-10 freeway is terribly foggy; they begin to pray we get there safely. I call my cousin Tania’s husband (and fellow Peterite) Chari, who offers to come and help us unload the truck and trailer. In 6 hours, we are in Tarzana, a town in the San Fernando valley. Ahead of us was a Uhaul from the Buddhist temple in LA, with guys and even Buddhist priests loading up the container. Behind us pull up about 2 other large trucks waiting for space.

The giving hasn’t subsided. A doctor came by twice to our house with some antibiotics and portable water purification units. He had somehow got my email forwarded to him. This morning, a dentist called saying they can help, too. Every one wants to help. The bank branch I go to, the Starbucks round the corner, my former boss at work leaves an envelope in my drawer, my sister’s boss wants to chip in, my corporate office, a magazine I write for, a printer, all pledge.

I have always believed, that in spite of the dark cloud hanging over us right now, there are tons of positive stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Not just in this country, but everywhere. Anyone who for a moment believes the rot put out in the media that America is being stingy, please speak to me. I am sure there are similar stories out there too. At least 2 people wrote to me from the UK, via this blog, saying they want to a contact in SL because someone is going over for relief work.

Sri Lanka may be one of the unluckiest countries on earth to be smitten by a tsunami just when the war had eased up. But God does work in marvelous ways, and I am optimistic that we will someday lift up our heads again.

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