Word: sumatra
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With billions of dollars already pledged to tsunami relief and celebrity benefits still pitching, donating may seem a tad less urgent these days. So are your dollars really needed? You bet. Victims along the 3,000 miles from Sumatra to Somalia face years of rebuilding, and there's a risk that disease could push the total number of lives lost far above the current estimate of more than 150,000. Still, it is more important than ever to be smart about how you give--to make sure your funds have the impact you want. A guide...
...lucky mix of geography and plate tectonics explains Burma's good fortune. The earthquake that created the tsunami occurred along a north-south fault line near Sumatra, sending the strongest waves to the east and west. According to computer models done by scientists at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, the waves that struck Burma, which lies mostly north of the fault, were much weaker than those that hit Thailand and Sri Lanka. "If the fault line had been running east-west, there could have been considerably more damage to Burma," says Jason Ali, a geoscientist at the University...
...disaster: 52 known dead and 637 still missing - donated five trucks and made equipment loans and other contributions valued at $2 million, all of which went to Indonesia for reconstruction in northern Sumatra. "This is a big catastrophe for people living in the region and it's our way of showing our involvement," says Scania chief financial officer Jan Gurander. Mobile-phone company Vodafone Group donated $1.7 million to relief groups, and $187,000 to Télécoms sans Frontières, which installs mobile networks in areas blighted by disaster and war, and MapAction, which performs satellite...
Among the first international aid workers to reach ground zero on the Indonesian island of Sumatra were the doctors and nurses of MSF. When they arrived at the one functioning hospital in Sigli, on the east coast, there was only a single, volunteer surgeon on hand. "Our hospital was crippled," says Dr. Taufik Mahdi, director of the 35-bed unit. "Most of our doctors and nurses were too traumatized to work or left to look for loved ones missing after the tsunami." That first day the MSF team performed six operations, and it hasn't stopped since. "The minute...
Other relief workers operate as a mobile triage unit, moving through the refugee camps that have sprouted across Sumatra's now barren landscape. Some 50,000 people are camped in local mosques and schools. Most of the refugees are still using rivers for washing their dishes and bathing--a recipe for cholera and typhoid. As the advance teams uncover unsanitary conditions in the camps, they report them to MSF water and sanitation units working in the area. "We work until midnight every day at the earliest, but we're always running behind," says Moens. "We just don't have...