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Sri Lanka Tsunami Survivors Return Home
6 minutes ago
By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer
NASUVANTIVU, Sri Lanka - On foot, by bicycle or in motorized rickshaw taxis, the people of this east coast village began returning home Wednesday as Sri Lanka turned its attention from relief efforts to resettling people uprooted by the Asian tsunami.
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The villagers, all ethnic Tamils, piled bundles of relief goods into the three-wheeled taxis or balanced them on their heads as they traveled the two miles home from the school complex where hundreds took sanctuary when waves hit their village, destroying or severely damaging their homes.
Sri Lankan military officers were visiting shelters across the eastern part of the country advising people it was time to go home and start rebuilding their lives.
Nothing indicated a wide-scale evacuation of relief centers was under way in Sri Lanka, which was the second hardest-hit nation after Indonesia, with more than 30,000 people dead and about 800,000 displaced by the Dec. 26 tsunami.
But the aid agency Oxfam also said it plans to speed up its work aimed at helping people rebuild their lives, since many Sri Lankans are eager to return home.
"This fast-tracking of the rehabilitation phase is unusual after a disaster, but it is clearly required and desired in this particular situation," Oxfam's program coordinator Raphael Sindaye said in a statement in the capital, Colombo.
"It is clear that many people are already wanting to return to their homes, or what is left of their homes, and try to start rebuilding their lives. This is despite the real fear many have that the tsunami could strike again," he added.
Most of Nasuvantivu, about 20 miles north of Batticaloa, eastern Sri Lanka's main town, is set back several hundred yards from the seashore, and even some flimsy looking bamboo structures survived. But some people lost everything.
Subramaniam Nadarasa's solid brick structure, set amid towering coconut trees on the sandy beach, was stripped to its cement floor. Blocks of the blue-painted walls were broken off and scattered dozens of yards away. One pot and a crumpled blue bicycle were all that remained of his possessions.
When the wave hit, Nadarasa scrambled up a tree, but his 14-year-old daughter fell from his arms into the roiling water. He later found her body and buried her.
About 400 thatched fishermen's huts had been clustered on the same beach under the palms, he said, but on Wednesday there wasn't a trace of them. The water had reached a depth of about 8 feet, he said, pointing to a branch on a tree as the marker.
Further inland, where most villagers lived, the water left a stain on the red brick houses about 4 feet from the ground.
A woman who called herself Rosa Amma, or Mother Rose, trudged slowly up the dirt paths and across the narrow causeways over a marshy lagoon that led to her thatched house. She looked far older than her 38 years and complained of heart problems.
Repeatedly breaking down into tears, Rosa Amma said two of her children and her sister died when the tsunami smashed the church where they were attending Sunday prayers.
"I'm very afraid to stay here. If it comes again, I won't have the strength to run away," she said.
Basic food, water and clothing have been flowing to refugee centers from United Nations (news - web sites) agencies, international charities and government warehouses. Authorities say aid has reached all but a few pockets.
But the facilities are overcrowded, unsanitary and potential breeding grounds for contagious diseases.
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