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A Long Way To Go

Children study at an intermediate shelter for the tsunami affected in India's southeastern Andaman and Nicobar Islands archipelago. The Dec. 26 tsunami killed about 10,749 people in India and left 5,640 missing and presumed dead.

AP Photo

By MONICA SCANDLEN mscandlen@tampatrib.com

Published: Dec 26, 2005

TAMPA - Yasodha Ratnasekera knew people would forget.

So in the days and weeks after a killer wave crashed ashore in his homeland, the TECO engineer poured himself into raising money to send to Sri Lanka.

He took days off from work, organized a charity garage sale and golf tournament, and used his own money to make plastic bracelets with the words "Band Against The Wave" to sell. His father, Tilak, traveled home on a fact-finding mission to figure out how best to use the money.

A year later, Yasodha has about 1,500 bracelets left. Nobody talks to him about the tsunami.

"Even my attention has faded," said Ratnasekera, 27, of Wesley Chapel. "Eventually, life catches up with you."

One year ago today, the tsunami hit 12 countries in Asia and Africa and left at least 231,452 dead and missing in one of the world's deadliest natural disasters.

Sri Lanka, a teardrop-shaped island southeast of India, was the second-worst-hit country - behind Indonesia - with at least 31,000 dead and 1 million homeless.

In the weeks and months that followed, donations flowed.

Donors pledged about $1.4 billion to the United Nations for tsunami relief. They were even more generous to nongovernmental organizations, giving nearly four times that much - $5.5 billion - to them and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, according to the office of the U.N. Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery.

By summer, the tsunami had largely disappeared from U.S. headlines, replaced by smaller disasters - Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath and the deadly earthquake in Pakistan.

Losses from those events didn't touch the tsunami. About 7,966 people are dead or missing from Katrina, with 1 million homeless. The earthquake killed about 87,000 people and displaced 3.2 million.

In the countries affected, the tsunami is still very real as the rebuilding creeps along.

"Still, people are very traumatized," said Shisir Khanal, managing director of Sarvodaya, U.S.A., a community development organization based on Buddhist principles. Khanal returned from a visit to Sri Lanka two weeks ago.

"People seem to have recovered almost after a year, but I met many people who are afraid to go out to sea."

Small Projects Are Best

In many places, the water rushed inland up to a mile, wiped away entire villages and carried families into the Indian Ocean when the water receded.

Slowly, houses are replacing the tents that lined the main road between Colombo and coastal areas, aid workers say. Smaller projects seem more successful than larger ones. The southern regions of the country are rebuilding quicker than the eastern regions because of a long-brewing conflict there between the majority Singhalese and minority Tamil populations.

Take the Florida Buddhist Vihara, a Sri Lankan temple based in Tampa, for which Tilak Ratnasekera acted as a conduit during his trip in February. The temple's tsunami relief fund raised $104,000, said temple member Sarath Witanachchi.

Most of the money was used to build 16 homes near Hikkaduwa in Galle district on the southern end of the island. The families in the homes have 20 children and 35 adults who are fishermen, factory workers and day laborers. With the remaining $20,000, the temple wants to start a scholarship fund for the children living in the houses.

Both Witanachchi and Ratnasekera said they wish Sri Lankan officials would pick up the pace of rebuilding.

"The government needs to step up and take care of these people," Witanachchi said. "Individuals and organizations have done what they can."

But some aid workers say it is unrealistic to expect exponential progress in one year.

World Vision, a Christian nonprofit agency, estimates it will take two to five years to rebuild after the tsunami.

"Twelve months is actually not a long time to try and get things done," said Jan Butter, communications manager for World Vision's Sri Lanka tsunami response. "It's not about just building individual homes. You have to be careful to build communities."

In a typical year, 5,000 to 7,000 permanent houses are built in Sri Lanka, he said. Today, the country needs 50,000 to 70,000 houses. Because of inflation and increased demand, the prices of land and supplies have gone up, adding to the delay in some places, Butter said.

World Vision has spent about $38 million in Sri Lanka of the $361 million it raised worldwide on projects such as a temporary market in the city of Galle. The old market, near a bus depot, was washed away in the tsunami. Also planned: 68 houses in Kirinda and the infrastructure to go along with them.

Misplaced Generosity

In some places, well-intentioned donations have come with a downside.

Khanal, of Sarvodaya, said that in some fishing villages, each fisherman received a new boat, changing the cultural complexion. Traditionally, fishing is a community job: Many people fish together from one boat.

"Now, everybody has a boat, and it creates a social tension," Khanal said.

Adding to the problem: More fish in the market brings down the price, and there are ecological concerns about overfishing.

Sarvodaya has worked for years in about 15,000 villages in Sri Lanka. Its tsunami projects include: putting up 1,200 houses around the island, building wells, sponsoring job training and supporting local business with small-scale loans in 226 villages. It raised about $3.5 million for tsunami relief, including a $1 million donation from the Bush-Clinton Tsunami Relief Fund to build 85 playgrounds.

Still, aid workers in Sri Lanka hope more recent disasters will remind the rest of the world of the tsunami's damage, not replace it.

"The tsunami brought this kind of destruction home to people, and Katrina did it again. Everybody realizes now that no one is immune to natural disasters," Butter said. "I think the world has shifted, and I don't think it will ever go back to the way it was before."