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| IDEP AID BY BOAT for the Asian Tsunami in Aceh |
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Less than one week after the Asian Tsunami struck, IDEP volunteers in Aceh were performing assessments and delivering aid by land, air and boat.
Two Bali-based IDEP volunteers flew to Padang December 31 with urgently needed cash and supplies. They joined a team of local diving and surfing companies in sharing information and assessing the needs of survivors in coastal communities.
On January 1, one of the IDEP volunteers flew over the coast with an AusAid representative and landed in several places, bringing back some of the first eyewitness information on the coast.
The next day, the head of the IDEP group in Padang heard about an AusAid relief plane full of supplies that had not been able to land and was preparing to return to base. He intercepted the plane and was able to redirect 15 tons of aid to private boats, which headed north to the tsunami zone.
By January 4, an additional seven IDEP volunteers including medics and engineers left Bali for Padang, carrying cash and medical supplies. Impressed by IDEP initiatives, AusAid donated funds to charter a 200-ton cargo ferry to bring relief to isolated coastal villages. Using donations raised by IDEP, a dedicated group of women volunteers in Padang shopped for and packed hundreds of plastic buckets with the essential supplies they knew survivors would need. The fully loaded Sumber Rejeki assessed a number of communities in the islands off the west coast, which were not badly damaged before proceeding north to Calang on January 10.
From a town of 35,000, perhaps 7,000 survived and almost every building had been destroyed. It took two days to off load supplies and the drilling equipment that was urgently needed to establish wells.
Although the Sumber Rejeki carried about 90 tons of aid, one volunteer reported that 20 such ships would not have made a dent in the needs on the ground. The ship refueled and picked up more supplies in Banda Aceh, then continued to supply aid to devastated communities on the coast until January 21. In that time it had distributed over 400 tons of emergency supplies.
By February 16, IDEP had helped stock five private boats with over 400 tons of emergency supplies.
Click here to see a slide show of IDEP’s Emergency Response efforts to the Asian Tsunami or an ABC Australia documentary video of one of the Sumber Rejeki’s voyages in the area.
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