3 January 2005
Source Guardian Unlimited

KOLHUFUSHI ISLAND, Maldives (AP) - Residents of this low-lying atoll are being forced to seek refuge on the sea more than a week after it rose up and destroyed their homes.

On the remote Maldives island of Kolhufushi, hundreds of people are sleeping in fishing boats because their homes are too damaged to live in.

The Maldives government is struggling to deliver emergency aid across a vast expanse of 1,192 tiny inhabited islands spread out over some 560 miles in the Indian Ocean.

Waves destroyed boats and property, Maldives

At least 10 people died and more than 50 were injured when waves as high as 13 feet engulfed Kolhufushi, 90 miles south of the capital, Male. Elsewhere in the Maldives, at least 70 others were killed by the earthquake-triggered waves on Dec. 26.

Here, the waves smashed coral houses, destroyed food supplies, contaminated wells with sea water, and ruined generators and communications equipment.

On one side of the island, a chunk of land the size of a football field slid into the sea.

Villagers said the first wave swept about 200 screaming people into the lagoon. A second wave carried them back onto land. Small children were deposited by the waves on top of cottage roofs.

Damage is so severe that it's not safe for people to move back into their houses. The women and children are living in concrete school buildings and tents. But there's not enough room for everyone, and the island's 400 men sleep in their boats.

Twenty to thirty men are packed into each 20-foot boat. In the mornings, they rise at dawn to resume clearing debris from the streets, repairing equipment and salvaging possessions.

``Logistics is the big problem here - just getting the stuff out to people who need it,'' said Ron Libby, emergency management specialist at the U.S. Agency for International Development. ``You have a situation in which it's very difficult for the government to reach all of the people all of the time.''

Disaster relief teams or military personnel from Australia, Japan, Europe, India and Pakistan are also operating in the Maldives, and supplies are pouring into the airport at Male.

But relief efforts are hindered by the difficulty of delivering aid to the more than 1,000 islands scattered hundreds of miles across the ocean.

Across the Maldives, about 14,000 people have been displaced from their homes, and as many as 100,000 of the 280,000 people need some form of emergency aid - mainly food, water, medical supplies and shelter.

Maldivian military officers said they expected to deliver enough tents to Kolhufushi within two weeks, but coast guard vessels had to focus primarily on keeping the island supplied with food and water from Male.

In Sri Lanka, Indonesia and other hard-hit countries, it's possible to move inland to obtain water, but on the tiny islands of the Maldives, ``there's nowhere else to go,'' Libby said.

He said sanitation was also a major concern since the tsunami destroyed sewage systems, and people on those islands that are inhabited are packed close together.

So far, however, no major disease outbreaks have been reported.

Hussain Nazim, 28, assistant island chief at Kolhufushi, said sea water had poisoned the banana, mango and breadfruit trees which had made Kolhufushi one of the few significant agricultural producers in the Maldives. The island is littered with brittle, yellowing leaves from dying trees.

``It will take at least a year to rebuild,'' said Nazim, whose father, standing next to him outside the family home when the tsunami hit, was killed in the disaster.

Marine Corps Maj. Max Andrews, another member of the U.S. team, said the military may provide equipment to clear debris as well as water purification and storage equipment.