Tsunami News & Photos

India Villagers Desperate for Tsunami Aid

Friday December 31, 2004 12:16 PM


AP Photo XMS108

By NEELESH MISRA

Associated Press Writer

PORT BLAIR, India (AP) - Fighting to survive without water or food since the tsunami, villagers on a remote southern archipelago forbidden to outsiders are starving and desperate for humanitarian aid to reach them, survivors and officials said Friday.

``There is nothing to eat there. There is no water. In a couple of days, people will start dying of hunger,'' said Anup Ghatak, a utilities contractor from Campbell Bay island, as he was being evacuated to Port Blair, the capital of India's island territory of Andaman and Nicobar.

India has so far denied permission to international aid groups trying to gain access to go deep into the islands, the last tsunami blind spot where casualties are not known but feared in the thousands.

Homeless and stunned victims poured into eight relief camps in Port Blair on Friday with harrowing tales of death and destruction. Walking long distances through dense forests to get to the nearest airfield, they were grateful they had survived but struggled to learn if their friends and families were safe.

India has officially reported 7,736 dead in the earthquake-tsunami disaster, but that does not include a complete count in the island territories, where officials estimate as many as 10,000 people could be buried under mud and debris.

Authorities believe rescuers will discover thousands of bodies among the crumbled homes and downed trees across the archipelago.

Many of the villagers alleged that relief was reaching the islands but was hoarded by local officials.

``There is starvation. People haven't had food or water for at least five days. There are carcasses. There will be an epidemic,'' Manoranjan Bhakta, Andaman's lawmaker to the federal parliament, told The Associated Press after being surrounded on a roadside by people demanding food and water for stranded family members.

Relief operations on the remote archipelago - which starts approximately 300 miles northwest of the quake's epicenter - have been limited to Indian officials and local volunteers who have struggled to deliver tons of rations, clothes, bedsheets, oil, and other items, hampered by lack of transportation to the remote islands.

``We would like to be invited to join the relief effort, and to be part of any helicopter or boat trip to the area,'' an official with the Paris-based Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said at a news conference on Thursday.

International humanitarian group Oxfam also requested entry, but Lt. Gov. Ram Kapse, administrator of the federally governed territory, said no decision had been made. He said four Indian volunteer groups have been allowed to travel to the islands.

Entry to foreigners is prohibited on most of the hundreds of islands scattered over some 4,350 miles in the Bay of Bengal, and even Indians need special permits to travel there.

Some 40 percent of the densely forested area is designated as a tribal reserve where indigenous people live; the remaining area is protected for wood cultivation.

``In the southern parts, people have suffered a lot. There is water scarcity everywhere. We fear an epidemic,'' said Tarak Banerjee, director of the disaster preparedness unit at the Voluntary Health Association of India.

Sharath Babu, head of a group of amateur HAM radio operators, also said his colleagues in the worst parts of Car Nicobar island had reported that ``relief is not reaching the people. People are hungry.''

Drinking water shortages have been reported, but local people were making do with eating coconut kernel and drinking coconut water, said Deputy Inspector-General A.N.basudev Rao.