February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
With the world watching, Ireland is providing some of the first help on the scene in these ravaged areas. Between government aid and public donations, agencies have praised the Irish people’s ongoing generosity as unprecedented.
Among the first to touch down in the region, Concern’s regional director, Anne O’Mahony, a nurse from Cork, has arrived in one of the most distressed areas.
In Sri Lanka, where the death toll is second only to Indonesia, O’Mahony and two others aid workers are presently staying in Colombo, the capital city. She and two other Concern workers have traveled along the “complete devastation” of the coast.
“I never imagined the power that weight and water could cause,” said O’Mahony, who has been with Concern for 18 years, “There were trucks were picked up and wrapped around poles and train tracks twisted around.”
But most pressing to O’Mahony was “the devastation of the people.”
“The smell of death is all around you,” she said. “The people have to wear masks.”
O’Mahony told of families, their homes destroyed, having to move to holding camps and Buddhist temples that have opened their doors to the homeless.
“I spoke to a woman who lost three children,” she said. “She couldn’t understand why she and her husband had survived.”
The inconsolable woman and her husband were fishing people, and had lost their boats, and in turn, their livelihood.
“Now how will she recover?” she said. “And she wasn’t alone.”
In the smallest fishing towns along the cost, O’Mahony saw entire populations wiped out, and work is to be done for a new abundance of female-headed households.
“The first thing is getting food and water to the people,” she said. “Getting so involved helps to deal.”
The temples have a constant supply of food coming in, and coupled with the formal relief from other agencies, help is making its way to those who need it.
She expects to be there for the next few weeks, while more of the Concern team makes their way to the island nation, but foresees Concern being in the area for at least the next two years.
“The work volume is huge,” she said. Still, she hopes that Sri Lanka’s “better-than-average infrastructure, good agriculture, good exports, good tourism, a reasonable climate, a well-educated population,” should help to aid their relief.
Along with the stories of tragedy that O’Mahony and other aid workers expect to hear during their time in the region, there is progress being made.
Concern’s Eithne Healy explained how while the group has never been to Indonesia and Sri Lanka, need overcomes the obstacles in this case.
Traveling into the areas not previously earmarked by Concern, such as Sri Lanka and Indonesia, has been humbling yet vital for the relief effort, according to Healy.
“All of the people going in are very experienced aid workers,” she said, “but Indonesia is a worst-case scenario. I heard one description saying people were ‘shocked and traumatized into inaction.’ “
While the Concern workers still has more traveling to do, they are helping to strengthen local aid groups already based in affected areas.
Healy spoke of the need to use as many local resources as possible to keep costs under control and put money back into the communities.
“We are trying to use local staff as much as possible,” she said. “We are also appealing to the public for cash, so we can buy locally.
Concern has 16 workers based in India, having had a presence there for several years. Being among the first on the scene, they have distributed 7,500 shelter packs that include non-food items, such as pots, soap, clothes and lanterns.
The group has mentioned that while places like India will see a smaller death toll than Sri Lanka or Indonesia, “it certainly remains a major disaster.”
Tamil Nadu is one of the most devastated regions affected. Concern warns that care should be taken that the shift in the balance may not negatively impact on how global resources are allocated there.
GOAL, another Irish relief agency, is on the ground in the area and has passed the