December 29, 2004 ISLAND CHAINS Indian Archipelago's Residents Beyond Easy Reach and Rescue By HARI KUMAR and AMY WALDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/international/worldspecial4/29scene.html?pagewanted=print&position=
[C] AR NICOBAR, India, Dec. 28 - This island is so flat that residents say water did not just wash in from the sea during the tsunami that struck on Sunday morning, but came up through cracks in the earth opened by the quake before it. The earthquake and the waves it set off reduced the Indian naval base here to rubble, flattening homes, scattering household goods, and filling the air with the stench of death. But it is the toll beyond the base, among the 350,000 people who live on the 36 habitable islands of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, that causes most concern. The southernmost reaches of this archipelago - 572 islands in all, spanning more than 450 miles between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea - are less than 100 miles from Sumatra, Indonesia, the quake's epicenter. Like Car Nicobar, most islands had little natural defense, sitting barely above sea level. The devastation here is clear, but the death toll is still uncertain. Indian officials estimate that 3,000 people are dead, and 3,000 missing, though only 500 bodies have been recovered. Some of the islands in the archipelago remain beyond communication, and are as much as three days' journey by ship. Officials fear that the disaster may have further decimated already vulnerable aboriginal tribal populations who have lived on these islands for millennia. Of the naval base's 1,700 residents, 27 bodies have been found and 76 people are unaccounted for. The rescue and relief operations being undertaken across Asia are daunting, but perhaps nowhere more than on these islands. Most have either no airstrip or very small ones. Jetties and roads have been damaged. On some islands, officials said, access is only by copter, to make food drops. The airstrip on Car Nicobar remains functional, which has meant that relief is coming via small transport planes bringing in water and food and carrying out evacuees. Night landings and takeoffs have been hurriedly arranged using flaming torches to line the runway. But for now, moving beyond the base is almost impossible because of the rubble - mud, broken trees, broken homes - surrounding it. Officials have been unable to reach the villages on the island's western side. Three thousand people have already been evacuated from Car Nicobar, with several thousand more waiting their turn. Residents say they believe others continue to hide in the island's overgrown interior, where they fled when the water came. Those people are at high risk for disease, with dead pigs everywhere, malaria rife and food and water severely limited. Refugees huddled at schools in the islands' capital, Port Blair, on Tuesday described how they had walked through the jungle to safety, husbanding coconut milk in the face of a brackish, fetid water supply, and sleeping on the bare ground at night. "We don't know how we walked, how we came there," said Cicily Robert, 30, a teacher, describing her march, along with pregnant women and children, to the safety of the district headquarters. All of the 15 villages around this small island sit close to the sea. "Nothing is standing in my village except coconut trees," said Suraj Mandal, 21, a vegetable seller from the village of Malacca. The Andaman and Nicobar islands are home to six aboriginal tribal groups, some of whose numbers have dwindled to a few hundred or less. Their fates are unknown. Where all of them, tribal and nontribal alike, will live until their villages are rebuilt is unresolved. At the airport in Port Blair - their home for now - a group of teachers and their families from the central government school at the base on Car Nicobar compiled a tally of the missing, and a list of everything they had lost: homes, educational certificates, scooters, jewelry, dignity. Late Tuesday afternoon, Wing Commander Sumit Mukherjee made his third sortie of the day, carrying 90 men, women and children, and one body from Car Nicobar to Port Blair. "If you are alive, you are alive," he said. "That's life." Hari Kumar reported from Car Nicobar for this article, and Amy Waldman from Port Blair. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company =========+========= FEEDBACK? http://nativenewsonline.org/Guestbook/guestbook.cgi GIVE FOOD: THE HUNGERSITE http://www.thehungersite.com/ Reprinted under Fair Use http://nativenewsonline.org/fairuse.htm =========+========= Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Native News Online a Service of Barefoot Connection ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $4.98 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/Q7_YsB/neXJAA/yQLSAA/1dTolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Nat-International/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
