Desperate refugees foraged for coconuts or looted food on Indonesia's battered Sumatra island, as the number killed in a mammoth earthquake and tsunami soared to more than 70,000 and tens of thousands still missing. Photo by WN
Mr Philippe Rombaut is one of the survivors from the devastating disaster caused by the powerful earthquake, measuring 9 on the Richter scale which hit Asia, unleashing a tsunami that devastated coastal areas of Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and tourist isles in Thailand. Mr Rombaut was in Sri Lanka during the deadly disaster.
Mr Rombout answered questions of Sofia News Agency Editor Nadya Dimitrova
A: How can you describe the situation in the disaster - hit areas in Asia?
Q: The situation is unbelievably chaotic and messy. Basically whatever could be washed away in an area of about 500 meters from the coastline is gone; that also includes most of the houses, electricity poles etc. A full train was washed from the tracks near Unawatuna and most of the people in it, died. Hundreds of small busses which usually run up and down the coastline were swept away and smashed into coconut trees. Until yesterday I still saw dead bodies lying around in the ditches and even on the streets. Hospitals are full of dead bodies and there are reports that hundreds have been buried already without identification. The smell now is getting very bad. Most of the water wells are contaminated with salt water and there is going to be a lot of work cleaning these wells, which is essential for sanitary reasons.
People are scared. Several false alarms are still occurring: "water is coming, water is coming" and everybody starts running or driving away like crazy". In the meantime some people are stealing whatever is left in the rubble. The first night there were curfews in the Galle area.
Fishermen are not going into the sea either because their boats are somewhere on the roof of a building inland or sunk or just for fear. Lots of people have no income because of that and food supplies are short.
Fuel is in short supply as well and that is why it took us a day before we started working to evacuate the tourists. (My father in law is the honorary consul of Belgium here and they have been living here for the last 25 years; I come here every year for Xmas since the last 14 years - that is why under the present circumstances, I do not consider myself a tourist).
A: What will be the consequences of that deadly quake disaster?
Q: It will take huge efforts to rebuild the economy. Important to note is that the worst hit is the east coast, which for a large part is a Tamil region (partly under control of the Tamil Tigers). It is necessary to devote a lot of attention to that part of the country as well. Fierce discussions are going on in the parliament here on that topic. The international community should and is attentive to that. For the time being the Tigers and the government are working together in help relief but situation is difficult in some regions because of landmines uprooted by the tsunami.
Huge efforts mean a lot of money, which was already scarce. Lots of badly needed infrastructure projects (such as the north south highway) might get further delayed for obvious reasons. 90% of the better hotels on the west coast have been destroyed. The same for the smaller hotels for backpack tourists. And the season just started. Lots of people will have no income from tourism this year (Sri Lanka was expecting about 560.000 tourists for the next year spending on average 85 USD/day).
A: How can the rest of the world help the most badly affected countries?
Q: International help is on its way and I hear that in the region where we are operating there is enough basic medical supplies (for the time being) after a first load of supplies was given yesterday - there are not many wounded people in comparison with the dead ones. Then again, it might be just a shifting from the reserves of Colombo and probably they are running short there now. But because of the hygienic situation, there is a real risk of diseases such as dysentery, cholera, etc. We need to stock up on medicine for these diseases.
Water pumps and disinfectant product for waters will be needed in huge quantities. We will concentrate on cleaning up some wells in the next days (now that we evacuated most of the tourists in our area). Sri Lanka will need a lot of heavy equipment (bulldozers, smaller excavators etc) to get rid of all the rubble. It is not available. Obviously, fuel will be an issue and it was already not that cheap.
A: What will the world need to overcome that tragedy?
Q: Very urgently some measuring equipment needs to be installed near the Sumatra fault. The tragedy is so huge because there was no warning and it could have been different. Sri Lanka and India did not install them because the likelihood for a tsunami to happen was low and the equipment (installation and maintenance) expensive. This measuring equipment should not be left to the responsibility of individual states; it is an international matter. With proper equipment, Sri Lanka will have at least 2-3 hours warning time, enough to at least evacuate people
It is very important to do so in order to convince the people to go back to ‘normal' life. Most of the people refuse to either go back to their houses to start clean up, or to stay on the coastline at night, or to go fishing because of fear. There is a lot of explaining to do. (Some people asked me today if we were expecting another meteor; it is also full moon and so the water is higher than normal which is another reason to fear another wave...)
A disaster like this will take years to overcome and the region will need all the help it can get in a sustained way ... not only during the next month or so.
And for the people in Bulgaria, we should all realize that whatever problem that we are facing in Eastern Europe and in Bulgaria in particular, we should be happy that we are only facing those... it could get much worse. We are very much privileged and very lucky.
Send to Kindle
