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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
In this section:
Worldwide Tsunami Relief Pledges Top $6b
Worldwide Tsunami Relief Pledges Top $6b
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U.S. Navy personnel load a helicopter with relief supplies
in Indonesia.
AP/World Wide Photos |
The Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean cut
communications and isolated many communities, but reports
of the disaster spread like wildfire around the world.
The number of dead grew into the thousands with each passing
day. After two weeks, reports spoke of more than 100,000 deaths—a
figure that would be dwarfed by the final estimates of about
273,000 dead and missing. About a third of them are people
who vanished without a trace and are unofficially presumed
to have died.
There was no outbreak of disease and no loss of life due
to epidemics. This is mainly because donor nations and aid
groups quickly joined hands with disaster relief officials
in the affected nations to dispatch immediate relief, organize
assessment teams to measure the need, and prepare for one
of the world’s largest humanitarian relief operations
in history.
Relief reached the needy as they set up shelters in tents
or in hundreds of schools, temples, mosques, and churches,
or with families unaffected by the disaster. Food, clean water,
medical care and other help was rushed by plane, helicopter,
ship, and trucks.
Soon after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck, USAID formed
an emergency Response Management Team (RMT) to coordinate
aid. Missions in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and India
immediately released $100,000 to each country for their Red
Cross or other local humanitarian groups.
The U.S. State Department set up a core group of nations,
along with Australia, Japan, and India, to coordinate aid.
State also prepared lists of missing American citizens to
help their relatives determine their fates.
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Men at Banda Aceh Airport look at a signboard with
names and photos of some of the more than 100,000 people
still missing and presumed dead in the tsunami.
Ben Barber, USAID |
The Department of Defense set up Joint Task Force 536 at
an air base in Thailand.
U.S. military officers there met with civilian relief specialists
from USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance
and agreed to ferry the Agency’s relief supplies into
Banda Aceh, Colombo, and Sri Lanka.
Although Aceh province had been off-limits to most aid workers
for 30 months as the government fought a separatist movement,
USAID did have an assistance program there with the International
Organization for Migration (IOM). USAID and IOM hired 80 large
trucks and loaded them with food, water, electric generators,
and barrels of gasoline. The convoy—traveling from Medan
over damaged roads—delivered the first relief to Aceh.
Two days after the tsunamis struck, Indonesian Vice-President
Muhammad Jusuf Kalla met with 200 ambassadors, donor agencies,
and NGOs.
“They showed us staggering pictures taken when the
president [Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono] flew from Papua to Banda
Aceh Monday—the vice president said he’d seen enough.
It looked like he had seen a ghost,” said Jon Lindborg,
deputy mission director in Jakarta.
Aid from all over the world flowed into Aceh quickly. U.S.
aircraft carrier group Abraham Lincoln was soon off the Aceh
coast. Helicopters from the carrier began carrying food and
water to tsunami survivors on the badly hit western side of
the coast, where roads and bridges had been destroyed, cutting
off all land communication with the relief effort building
up in Banda Aceh.
One month after the tsunamis, the International Federation
of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies announced that the
$1.2 billion pledged worldwide was sufficient to its relief
program.
By March, governments pledged more than $6 billion in relief
and reconstruction funds. Americans alone privately donated
another $1 billion to relief agencies.
As the efforts in the Indian Ocean shift from relief to
reconstruction, USAID is playing a major role. Counseling
and support for orphanages, job creation programs, and other
efforts is ongoing.
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Survivors of the tsunami in Banda Aceh earn $7 per
day clearing away muck from a school through a USAID-funded
program, which is operated by the moderate Islamic organization
Muhammidiyah.
Ben Barber, USAID
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