Six injured South African survivors of the tsunami in Thailand arrived at Lanseria International Airport on board a rescue flight from Bangkok on Saturday night. Medical director of International SOS South Africa, Dr Izak Maree, said on Sunday one survivor was critically injured, while the other five were in a serious condition.
”They suffered multiple large lacerations, bruises and fractures and were taken to hospitals in Johannesburg and Pretoria,” Maree said.
Families, ER 24, four ambulances and a Star helicopter were on hand to receive the survivors of the earthquake and tidal wave which killed thousands of people in South Asia and some in Africa last Sunday.
Maree was not able to name the survivors but said most of them were in their twenties and thirties. There were no children among them. He said five of the six holiday makers were from Gauteng.
Sixteen South Africans are still missing, 14 of them in Thailand and two in India.
Meanwhile, SABC news reported that two of the many South Africans who escaped the deadly tsunamis returned home on Saturday.
David Staniforth and his fiancée Julie Onody from Durban were two of the survivors who dodged the huge waves on Raily island in Thailand.
Staniforth, the goalkeeper of the national hockey team, has been hailed as a hero for helping to get people to higher ground when the wave hit the island. He said he reacted instinctively and started helping other people.
The Strydom couple, Kallie and Monique — once victims of a hostage drama in the Philippines — have also pledged their support towards victims of the South Asian disaster.
The two were kidnapped and held for four months in a jungle in the Philippines by a group of Muslim extremists while on holiday four years ago.
On Saturday, the couple visited the Disaster Operational Call Centre in Pretoria to show their gratitude to the people who helped to secure their release, SABC reported.
World tsunami aid tops R12bn
Meanwhile, Britain says it is preparing to commit military forces to the tsunami relief effort around the Indian Ocean after an emergency appeal for help from the United Nations.
The UN’s special co-ordinator, Margareta Wahlstrom, issued the call for assistance after concluding that aid teams were finding it impossible to cope with the scale of the disaster in parts of the devastated region and were unable to operate in Aceh province on Sumatra, where 45 000 people have been killed.
As the official death toll continued to rise, the UN estimated the figure was likely to exceed 150 000, although the full number will probably never be known.
The UN’s plea came as one of the biggest relief efforts ever seen finally cranked into action, with supplies beginning to reach some of the worst-hit areas. It also came as pledges of aid from around the world passed the $2-billion (about R12-billion) mark, with Japan’s announcement that it was boosting its aid promise from $30-million to $500-million. That made it the largest single donor, topping America’s pledge on Friday of $350-million — 10 times its original commitment.
However, serious problems remained in getting aid to some of the regions that have suffered most — in particular areas of Indonesia that were closest to the epicentre of last Sunday’s earthquake.
On Saturday, driving rain was further hampering relief efforts, although Indonesian naval ships managed to reach the western coast of Sumatra to deliver supplies to areas that were initially out of reach of trucks and air-drops.
The United States ambassador to Indonesia, B Lynn Pascoe, speaking in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, acknowledged that there had been ‘bottlenecks’ in distributing aid in Aceh, but said efforts were now progressing, despite reports from across the region of places that had yet to be visited by emergency assessment teams.
The president of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, admitted that assistance was slow in coming to the town of Meulaboh and other areas in tremendous need, and asked the world for help. ‘I appeal to the world community to contribute to the reconstruction of Indonesia ,which has been hit by disaster, and we welcome those contributions as a manifestation of global unity,’ he said.
He acknowledged that his government had been slow in dealing with the situation – bloated bodies remain uncollected in the regional capital Banda Aceh and there is no sign of any ability to clear the massive amounts of debris and mud in the isolated town.
The deployment of British forces was announced by the International Development Secretary, says Hilary Benn. He confirmed that Downing Street had authorised the mobilisation of the British military to assist with the aid operation, which he described as the ‘largest humanitarian relief effort in history’.
Two naval vessels, HMS Chatham and RFA Diligence, will arrive in the region on Tuesday, where they will be sent to the Maldives or Sri Lanka, depending on need.
A British C-17 transport plane arrived in Jakarta yesterday carrying 10 mobile medical units requested by the World Health Organisation, which will serve 100 000 people for three months. Benn writes: ‘We are also looking at other ways in which UK armed forces might be of help.’
The Ministry of Defence confirmed last night that a meeting had been held on Friday to discuss British military involvement, but that all action would be taken under the auspices of the UN.
At least nine Seahawk helicopters from a US aircraft carrier off Sumatra began flying supplies to coastal cities closest to the earthquake’s epicentre. In Banda Aceh, tons of rice, water, tarpaulins and medical supplies began arriving in trucks and aircraft. Australian troops are already on the ground.
In his first interview since the tsunami hit on Boxing Day, Tony Blair told Channel 4 News of his horror at the ‘global catastrophe’ and restated his belief that the UN had to play the lead role in the relief effort. He also paid tribute to the British public, whose donations have now topped £60m, outstripping the government’s £50m aid package.
With Indonesia now identified as the most severely affected country, Britain joined Germany and Canada in calling for immediate discussions about the cancellation of part of the country’s massive debt burden to help with the aid effort.
Britain has pledged to use its year-long chairmanship of the G8 club of the world’s richest nations, which began yesterday, to strike a deal on a long-term package of assistance, including debt relief, for the countries worst affected by the disaster.
Treasury officials confirmed that the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, would begin immediate discussions on the relief of Indonesia’s £75bn debt burden this week.
”As chair of the G8, the UK will strive not only for an international co-ordinated effort of sustained aid to meet the immediate humanitarian needs, but will also take the lead in looking at how we can use debt relief to alleviate the economic consequences of this natural disaster over the longer term,” said a Treasury spokesperson.
Campaigners have argued for several years that Indonesia is a strong candidate for debt forgiveness.
Brown has called for complete forgiveness of all the debts of the so-called ‘highly indebted poor countries’, which already receive some debt relief from the global community. But Indonesia has never been included in the programme, in part because of political concerns about how well any extra cash would be spent.
The problems in distributing aid have been exacerbated by the huge geographical spread of the disaster. ‘There are big problems in organising the distribution of medicine,’ said Riza Sofwan of Save the Children. ‘We do not have transport to reach those who need it the most.’
Salvage and rescue work continued around the Thai resort of Phuket yesterday, where relatives of missing tourists from around the world continued to arrive, looking for loved ones, poring over lists of the dead and missing and searching through hospitals. Six elephants, normally used to haul logs in forests, were being sent to pull heavy debris in areas that are too hilly or muddy for vehicles. Rescuers, flagging after several days of search efforts, asked for donations of energy drinks and coffee.
Japanese, Taiwanese and German search and rescue teams were in action this weekend, as well as British police forensic science experts, who were helping the Thais identify some of the foreigners killed, and ‘disaster victim identification’ teams from Australia and New Zealand. The UN children’s fund, Unicef, has also sent paediatricians to Thailand to provide child survivors with urgently needed care.
In Sri Lanka, flash floods blocked roads and forced the evacuation of 2 000 victims of the disaster. India has dispatched a ship converted into a 50-bed hospital to help its neighbour’s aid effort. Remote Indian islanders were said to be facing starvation, however. In the Andaman Islands, officials and volunteers struggled to deliver tons of rations, clothes, sheets and oil, hampered by a lack of transport. – Guardian Unlimited Â