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The Asian tsunami may have caught many unawares, but the emergency responseto it was by no means haphazard. Relief actions were based not just on theinstinctive human urge to help others, but also on sound scientific and technical

know-how, thanks to the emerging field of disaster medicine.

Over the last few decades, research and field surveys by experts have shed light onthe effects of disasters, and allowed healthcare workers to be better prepared in theirresponse to the recent tragedy.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Communicable Diseases Working Groupon Emergencies for instance, gave clear instructions on what needs to be immediatelyprovided for the survivors. These included acute emergency care, safe drinking waterand sanitation as well as basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing.

The Science of

Reaching out to the tsunami victims

by Lea Wee

Helping Others

Aerial view of devastation in western Aceh, Sumatra, caused by last month's tsunami.

Photograp

hs courtesy of Professor Lim

Meng K

in (National U

niversity of Singap

or e)

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It also advised affected countries to look out for water-borne diarrheal diseases andinsect or rodent-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.

Backed by hard facts, it put to rest rumors of disease epidemics posed by deadbodies. This prevented emergency workers from panicking and thereby adding to thesuffering of the survivors by disposing bodies inappropriately. However, morgue workerswho routinely handle corpses were asked to avoid contact with blood and body fluidsas past evidence has shown that they may run a risk of blood-borne viruses.

It was also heartening that the outpour of personal and international solidarity forthe stricken populations was not hampered by a lack of trained personnel in medicalhumanitarian aid. This can be credited to the relevant training and research programsintroduced by several universities worldwide. The National University of Singapore(NUS) for instance, started an annual eight-day course in Medical and HumanitarianEmergencies five years ago. Since then, scores of healthcare professionals, mainly fromdeveloping countries, have benefited from the program, which is run by the NUSDepartment of Community, Occupational and Family Medicine in collaboration withthe Johns Hopkins Center for Disaster and Refugee Studies.

As Old as Mankind

What exactly is disaster medicine and how did it come about?

Emergency aid is as old as humanity, as the authors of a paper on disaster medicineonce pointed out in the Annals of the MBC (Mediterranean Burns Club). The earliestattempt at organized aid probably came from our hunter and warrior forefathers whenthey helped each other dress wounds. This evolved into the mass casualty care of more

Relief supplies

Photograp

hs courtesy of Professor Lim

Meng K

in (National U

niversity of Singap

or e)

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modern times. The founding of the International Red Cross and the formulation ofinternational humanitarian law subsequently took emergency care into the internationalarena.

Towards the end of World War II, the United Nations Relief and RehabilitationAdministration (UNRRA) became the first disaster management enterprise on a globalscale, dispensing massive aid from the Mediterranean to the Pacific. By then, the term“disaster,” whether natural or man-made, connoted an emergency of such magnitudethat immediate needs overwhelm available resources, creating a situation which requiresoutside help or international relief. Through global organizations such as the WHO,disaster management and in particular, disaster medicine, began to play an increasinglyimportant role in overall health and development planning.

Beyond Immediate Response

As a comprehensive managerial system, disaster medicine looks beyond the healthissues arising from the immediate response phase, said Professor Lim Meng Kin, whodirects the Medical and Humanitarian Emergencies course at the NUS.

It also explores longer-term issues from the otherphases of the disaster cycle: the rehabilitation andreconstruction phase and the mitigation phase, whichinvolves preparing for future disasters (see Fig. 1). Tothis end, it incorporates various health disciplines,including emergency medicine, public health, nutrition,psychiatry, pediatrics, forensic medicine, andepidemiology.

According to Prof Lim, the recovery phase is aschallenging, if not more so than the response stage.

He said: “What happens after the media attentionturns elsewhere and the international relief teams depart,but lives and livelihoods remain disrupted? The arduous,longer-term phase of social, economic, and physicalreconstruction begins.”

The new priorities will include rebuilding safe homes, schools and communitycenters and restoring safe water supply, sanitation and electricity. Jobs need to begenerated and skills training conducted. Health and psychosocial issues that requireattention range from rebuilding damaged health facilities, lowering the risk ofcommunicable diseases, to setting up community health care.

As disasters bring about a major break in the development of affected communities,the billions pledged so far for the tsunami victims will go a long way to help them getback on their feet, said Prof Lim.

But he pointed out that community participation needs to be broad-based if recoveryis to be an opportunity for developing self-reliance and sustainability.

He said: “Coordinating the work of different stakeholders committed to this task —government, non-governmental, and private — will be a major challenge,” he said.

Fig. 1: The DisasterCycle

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Preparing for The Next Disaster

With hindsight, everyone now agrees a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean isan obvious and costly omission. Care must be taken to ensure that the same predisposingrisks to the disaster are not repeated, said Prof Lim, who is also the chairman of theDisaster Preparedness Committee in the Singapore Red Cross.

Indeed, the importance of pre-disaster planning was highlighted in a number ofinstances during the recent catastrophe.

Said Prof Lim: “The disposal of dead bodies would have been better handled ifstandard protocols were worked out beforehand. One might not expect Aceh or theMaldives to have the expertise, equipment or technology, but if the pre-disaster planninghad been thorough, it would have included the early mobilization of forensic teamsfrom abroad, or at least clear protocols to follow, such as fingerprinting and the takingof tissue samples before the burial of unidentified bodies.”

The situation would have been less chaotic and the subsequent heartaches or lackof “psychological closure” on the part of loved ones, and medico-legal problemsinvolving insurance claims, might have been lessened, he said.

As it turned out, refrigeration units were insufficient or not readily available. Forensicapplication of DNA technology was patchily applied, and only in a few places. Accordingto the Straits Times, the bodies of hundreds of tsunami victims in southern Thailand hadto be exhumed so that new DNA samples could be taken amid concerns that theremight be Westerners among them who were misidentified as Thais.

Another area which requires pre-planning is psychosocial support, an importantbut often overlooked part of disaster response, said Prof Lim. The Xinhua News Agencyreported that more than 5000 people in Thailand’s tsunami-hit South visited psychiatriststo deal with trauma brought by the disaster. The Raffles Hospital team in Banda Acehsaid children who turned up at their makeshift clinic were often so traumatized by theloss of their families or homes, they could not speak.

Prof Lim noted: “A more organized response involving teams of counsellors wouldhave helped ease the psychological trauma of victims, but such teams have to be pre-planned and pre-trained.”

Having said that, he felt that at the macro-level, the local and international responsewas as best as it could be, given the circumstances.

He said: “A complex disaster on such a scale, affecting so many countries, requirescoordination at the highest global level. The United Nations has rightly assumed theleadership role. Let’s hope that it succeeds, and that the global response will measureup, for it’s almost certain that this will not be our last big disaster.”

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A s of press time, the global death toll from the Asian tsunami shot above 226,000with still tens of thousands of people missing. In Aceh, Indonesia, officials andaid workers are still hauling decomposed bodies more than three weeks after

the disaster, with about 3500 cadavers being removed each day.

Disaster relief teams comprising hundreds of emergency medicine specialists,physicians from various specialties and nurses have flown from all over the world tovoluntarily provide medical treatment to thousands of victims. Among these kind-hearteddoctors are Kaiser Permanente physicians from the United States led by obstetrician/gynecologist Dr Vaji Dharmasena. Dharmasena and emergency medicine specialist DrHernando Garzon of Davis are the first of dozens of Kaiser doctors who, over the courseof the coming year, will take time to assist tsunami victims in Sri Lanka.

What Do the Disaster Teams Do?

Dr Garzon, a very experienced doctor of disaster medicine, regularly handles medicalproblems after hurricanes and floods in the US. He rushed to Oklahoma City to tend tothe injured after the federal building was bombed in 1995, and was on site at the WorldTrade Center after September 11, 2001.

According to Dr Garzon, “There are many phases in disaster relief. The first is todeal with trauma. The second is to deal with injuries to people who fall off ladders, stepon a nail or become ill because they have just run out of things — their medications,their food. A third phase, lasting longer, may occur when diseases such as cholera,typhoid, tetanus and malaria spring up because of the broken public health and sanitationinfrastructure.”

Asian Tsunami DisasterRelief Efforts

By Yvette Atienza

So Far, So Good

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Providing Basic Medical Care

In the immediate aftermath, the tsunami disaster medicine physicians have been treatingminor injuries, conducting medical checkups and trying to keep diseases from spreading.Surgeons also performed emergency surgeries, when needed, and they set up aid stationsthat included the basics: a laboratory, a pharmacy, limited obstetrics services and arehydration and preventative medicine section. Doctors also check off prescriptionsfor antibiotics and anti-fungals and volunteer nurses help to clean and tape infectedwounds.

The World Health Organization (WHO) developed and ensured the provision ofemergency health kits to all the disaster relief teams. Each emergency health kit included

medicines, disposables and instruments to meetthe needs of 10,000 people for three months.

A complete emergency kit contained tenidentical boxes, each one meant for 1000 people,and each consisting of a basic and supplementaryunit. The basic unit is intended for use by primaryhealth care workers with limited training andlocated in remote areas. It contained non-injectable drugs, medical supplies and someessential equipment, accompanied by simpletreatment guidelines. The supplementary unitcontained drugs, renewable supplies andequipment needed by doctors working in first- orsecond-referral health facilities.

The kits were primarily intended for displacedpopulations without medical facilities and wereused for initial supply of primary health carefacilities where the normal system of provision hadbroken down. Basic equipment in the kits included

a complete sterilization set and items to help provide for clean water at the healthfacility.

In addition, an early warning and control system for epidemics such as malaria,diarrheal disease, measles and dengue fever have also been set up. So far, fortunately,no outbreaks in the disaster areas have been reported.

Tetanus Vaccination

In guidelines from the WHO, it is strongly recommended that in emergency situationssuch as the South Asia tsunami where there are serious injuries, tetanus immunizationshould be paid special attention.

As tetanus is a complication of wounds and injuries, it is essential that injuredpeople receive appropriate surgical and medical care of contaminated open wounds.This is because a person without or with insufficient immunization is at risk of developingtetanus after a wound gets infected with tetanus spores. Similarly, mothers with no orinsufficient tetanus vaccination and who deliver in unclean circumstances can developtetanus themselves after the delivery, or their newborn can develop neonatal tetanus.

Children are especiallyvulnerable.

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In most instances, people with infected or dirty wounds received booster doses ofvaccine (if the previous dose was given long ago). Depending on the vaccination historyand the seriousness of the wound infection, tetanus immunoglobulins, in addition tothe tetanus vaccine were provided, to give additional protection. If the patient hadnever received tetanus immunization in the past, tetanus immunization was givenimmediately.

WHO Action for the Crisis

Most of the WHO disaster relief efforts have been focused on the following to date:

• Communicable disease early warning, surveillance and response: Countries havebeen put on the alert and monitoring for possible outbreaks, especially diarrhea,malaria, dengue, tetanus through disease surveillance and verification.

Across the region, WHO has put in place or strengthened existing surveillance systemsand has prepared stockpiles and teams of experts to respond in the case of an outbreak.Adequate quantities of medicines, oral rehydration solution and IV fluids are availableand the WHO field office is preparing standard treatment guidelines for epidemic-prone diseases and assessing critical supplies for disease outbreaks.

Fortunately, no outbreaks have been reported yet.

• Public health strategies and action: The WHO is also focusing its support on providingtechnical support for water, nutrition, sanitation, immunization, environmental andmental health, women’s health and injuries.

The WHO channeled surgical supplies to the affected areas and has made guidanceavailable to the relief community involved in treating injuries. It has laid out clearlythe priorities and major considerations for management of the injured survivors.WHO’s concern was twofold: one is to reduce avoidable death through complicationssuch as wound infection, and tetanus. The second major concern is to minimizelifelong disability by ensuring appropriate trauma care, particularly among peoplewith serious extremity injuries. Its recommendations may be found in their websitewww.who.int

• Ensuring access to dependable health services: Reconstruction of health servicesand systems are being led by WHO and the Red Cross simultaneously with the reliefefforts.

Assessments of health services in the affected areas are being carried out to determineneeds for reconstruction. Health system supply chains are being restored and publichealth services re-established. These include vaccination campaigns, water andsanitation, nutrition, and health services. Rebuilding permanent water and food supplyand sanitation systems, health facilities, schools and infrastructure are also majorpriorities, although these may take several years to complete.

Producing Safe Drinking Water

According to WHO guidelines, the three top priorities in a disaster should be the provisionof sufficient quantities of safe water, basic sanitation arrangements and promotion of

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good hygiene behaviors.

So far, tsunami disaster workers have looked into providing thousands of liters ofpotable water each day, as well as chlorinating local wells and monitoring water supplies.Singapore and Canada relief teams have produced thousands of liters of clean drinkingwater and chlorinated local wells. According to the guidelines, a minimum of 15 litersper person per day should be provided as soon as possible, though in the immediatepost-impact period, it may be necessary to limit treated water to a minimum of 7.5liters per day per person.

In response to the crisis, water samples in Tamil Nadu are being tested for residualchlorine by an MOH/WHO team as part of the WHO India Environmental Healthsupport for the response. In Malaysia, the Food Quality Control Division of the MOHcontinues the food safety quality assessments that were started on 1 January 2005. Inthe states of Pulau Pinang and Kedah, operational relief centers were evaluated forfood preparation and food samples and were found satisfactory.

In Sri Lanka, water and sanitation experts have confirmed that water is beingprovided in sufficient quantity/quality in displacement camps, although the sanitationinfrastructure needs to be strengthened. The International Federation of the Red Crossand Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is providing drinking water to more than 20,000people. Red Cross branches in Hambantota, Ampara, Kalutara and Matara will alsoclean 3100 wells within the next few weeks.

Providing Trauma Counseling

One of the most important aspects of disaster relief and medicine is the provision ofcounseling services to the victims. The tsunami and earthquake affected vulnerablepopulations such as women, children and the elderly more than most.

In response, a WHO expert has completed an assessment of psycho-social needsand recommends greater coordination and use of standard materials among all therelief organizations, in order to move towards “normalization.”

In villages in western Aceh, the health assessment teams found a significant numberof unaccompanied children needing additional assistance and support. The team hassuggested that a measles vaccination campaign be extended to the region to cover allchildren under 15 years of age and to include the distribution of vitamin A capsules tothose aged six to 59 months.

What Lies Ahead

In spite of the great challenges, the disaster relief teams are rapidly shifting to recovery,rehabilitation and self-reliance. Ultimately, they are working towards a situation inwhich people are less vulnerable, and are protected from health threats by an effectiveglobal system of alert and response.

This transition from relief to reconstruction should take place smoothly, withsustained support. Otherwise, as with other disasters, communities can languish formany years in a state of dependence, with high levels of disease and mortality.

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Water WoesF reshwater sources in many of the countries affected by the

tsunami have been contaminated by saltwater. Water andsanitation systems are destroyed, making normal treatment and

disinfection processes irrelevant and distribution impossible. Inaddition, seawater has carried contaminants deep inland. To makematters worse, people are crowded into buildings and camps, wherefresh water supplies and latrines are overtaxed and sewage threatensto seep into other water sources.

Atolls in the Maldives may be worst affected and it could takeyears before the situation recovers. In the Maldives, salt water filledwells and invaded porous rocks. Lenses, reservoirs of fresh groundwaterin the limestone rocks, are the main source of water for these islanders.Normally, the monsoon seasons would help flush out the lenses, butin the short term, the communities are reliant on outside aid for freshwater. In some cases, small islands will need to be evacuated.

This was the approach taken by Indonesia for some of their affectedpopulation. Especially if the numbers are small and accessibility tothe worst hit areas is compounded by downed bridges and flooding, itmay be easier to take them to the aid than to take the aid to them.

Water treatment plants, ranging from purification plants that workon river water to desalination plants that pump in saltwater, are beingsent to areas such as Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

Various Aid

In Maldives, disaster aid group Medair is using a new techniqueto drill new wells in the worst affected areas. A high-pressure jet ofwater is used to penetrate about 6m below the surface to find clean

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water. The technique works only in soft or sandy soil, not rock, but it has workedsuccessfully in Madagascar and Darfur.

In addition to flying in fresh water for the tsunami-devastated areas, other countriessuch as Singapore and Australia have also donated water treatment plants. The Australianmilitary set up a mobile treatment plant that produces 8000 liters a day. Japanese, Australianand US naval ships were deployed to the disaster areas with onboard hospitals and waterdesalination plants. Seven of the US ships can produce 90,000 gallons of fresh water aday and a ship can deploy a field hospital ashore.

Singapore had send a water desalination plant, which arrived at the Maldivian capitalof Male on January 7, and two more are on the way. One plant will produce 240m3 ofclean drinking water a day, enough for 120,000 people. One portable plant is already inplace in Meulaboh, in Aceh, Indonesia. Two more will reach Aceh by January 16. Ratherthan desalt seawater, these two plants will purify surface water from lakes and rivers.

The water desalination plants pump in muddy seawater and filter out the solidimpurities. This water then sluices through a cylinder with thin membranes that removesthe salt in a process known as reverse osmosis. Finally, chlorine is added to kill bacteria.

Aid organizations such as Mercy Relief, and companies such as F&N Coca-Cola(Singapore), have also sent in aid in the form of bottle water and purification tablets. Andin Sri Lanka, the Lion Brewery plant in Colombo has given up making beer and switchedto bottled water to do its part.

Outbreaks

Drinking from contaminated water can lead to diseases such as cholera, dysenteryand typhoid. Symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, fever and chills.Severe diarrhea causes dehydration, muscle weakness and in extreme cases, might evenbe fatal if left untreated.

Sanitation

The other half of the water equation is sanitation, or toilets. In many areas, sewagesystems were damaged and wells contaminated by dirty saltwater and the enormousamounts of debris. In such situations, it is all too easy for diseases to break out. Amongthe most worrisome is cholera, caused when bacteria contaminates food and water. Itcauses severe diarrhea and can have a 50% death rate, but can be treated easily withrehydration techniques.

From other refugee crises, lessons could be learned in preventing and treating cholera.The worst situation ever encountered was in Goma in the former Zaire in 1994, when45,000 Rwandan refugees died of cholera after fleeing their country in the wake of thegenocidal slaughter of at least 800,000 people.

While that disaster had its own unique circumstances, aid officials said it taughtthem to aim to deliver 15 L of water a day to each refugee rather than the 5 L per daydelivered then. They also learned that it can be more important to accompany refugees toa contaminated nearby lake with eye-droppers of disinfectant than to send in tankertrucks of water.

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Tsunami’s Impacton the Environment

Aside from the incalculable human tragedy, the recent tsunami disaster hascreated, scientists and economists are now concerned and calling for attentionand action on its direct long-term impact on the environment and the economiclivelihoods of the countries affected.

By Yvette Atienza

According to a report in National Geographic.com, aside from the massive lossof human lives, the other most obvious casualties of the tsunami were marinelife and ecosystems. In Thailand, streets became littered with dead bodies of

dolphins and sea turtles that were swept 500 meters inland. Some sea turtles were leftinjured, while stingrays and sharks were left stranded in fields and parking lots in thewake of the deadly waves. In many coastal towns, coral reefs and mangroves havebeen damaged.

Coral reefs are among the world’s most productive ecosystems and mangrovesare tropical, inter-tidal forests composed of salt-tolerant trees and plants. These naturalstructures support a huge variety of marine organisms and are considered vital nurseryareas for many species of plant life fish and crustaceans.

Conservationists are now calling for the affected coral reefs and mangroves to berebuilt and protected immediately. According to Stefan Hain, head of the Coral ReefUnit of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) World ConservationMonitoring Centre in Cambridge, England, these damaged reefs and mangroves couldaffect the livelihoods and marine ecosystems of the affected coastal towns adversely, ifnot rebuilt immediately.

In the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, there is particular concern for the habitatsof its famous “dugongs” (seawater turtles) and saltwater crocodiles, which were eitherwashed away or destroyed by large amounts of mud, sediment and debris that werewashed from the land and into the sea.

Conservationists fear the tsunami disaster might have wiped out its latest generationof leatherback, green sea, hawksbill, and olive ridley turtles. Sarang Kulkarni, a marinebiologist with Reef Watch Marine Conservation based in Mumbai (Bombay), India,fears the turtles’ nesting beaches might have vanished as these islands have gonedown by one to three meters due to tectonic activity. These turtles normally nest fromNovember to January each year and he is concerned that a large number might nothave been able to survive the tsunamis, as turtles are not great swimmers and notequipped to cope with violent currents.

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In addition, all the accumulated mud and sedimentaion could become what UNEPexperts call “turbidity clouds” , which can also smother and destroy the coral reefspermanently. Reefs are built by coral polyps and symbiotic algae, which thrive only inpristine waters. Hains said, “Algae depend on sunlight and, via the algae, so do thecorals. If they are deprived of sunlight, it is very difficult for corals to survive. To acertain extent, corals have self-cleaning mechanisms, but we will just have to see whetherthey will cope with this amount of debris.”

The importance of rebuilding reefs and mangroves as soon as possible is underscoredby the fact that these act as natural breakwaters and natural shock absorbers againstfloods, cyclones and tsunamis. According to a WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature orWorld Wildlife Fund) report, in Andhra Pradesh in India, many people survived thetsunamis when they took refuge in mangroves, as these mangroves took the brunt of thewave impact.

Kulkarni added it will take some time before a full environmental assessment canbe carried out.

New Asia Maps and Coastlines Redrawn

In addition to its massive death toll on human and marine ecosystems, the Decembertsunami disaster has also rearranged geographic features of the Indian Ocean on agargantuan scale—above and below the water’s surface. Reports continue to surface ofvanished islands, restructured coastlines, and uncertain shipping lanes.

David Skole, who works for the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations(CGCEO) at Michigan State University, USA, used 30-meter-resolution (33 yards) satelliteimagery to take pictures of tsunami-hit areas in Aceh. The images revealed about 400to 500 square kilometers damaged along a narrow ribbon of coastline, with some pocketsworse than others.

In a before-and-after comparison using a global database of Landsat images fromthe year 2000, the tsunami-hit areas showed massive coastline erosion and new islandsthat were once connected to the coastline

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in Bethesda, Maryland is alsousing its satellite technology to determine which areas around the Indian Ocean areheavily damaged and most in need of assistance. Reports revealed tsunamis also wipedP

hotographs courtesy of P

rofessor Lim M

eng Kin (N

ational University of S

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out buoys and fixed navigational aids. Along the coastlines and near ports, wrecks anddebris fill the waters. One of two major lighthouses out at the north end of the Strait ofMalacca was destroyed.

Experts say it could take several months or more to open affected Indian Oceanports. Unverified reports suggest that areas of the straits that were once thousands offeet deep are now as shallow as 100 feet (30 meters) — too shallow for large commercialvessels.

Changed Landscapes

In addition, Dutch research at Delft Technical University has revealed that the underseaearthquake that caused tsunamis has also permanently changed landscapes up to 930miles away from the epicenter off the coast of Indonesia. Based on measurements fromsatellite data that has not previously been published, the measurements revealed thaton the Indonesian island of Sumatra, closest to the epicenter of the earthquake, landshifted by approximately more than three feet. The Thai island of Phuket, 460 milesaway, moved 3.9 inches, while Singapore moved 0.8 inches. The earth’s crust at theunderwater epicenter moved from 30 to 80 feet during the quake.

Professor Ernst Schrama and his colleagues at Delft University have been studyingland movements in the region since 1994, and the data was obtained with GlobalPositioning System, or GPS, receivers placed around the region by Dutch and localresearchers. The Delft researchers will present full details of their findings at a conferencein Vienna in April.

One Million Jobs Destroyed

In Indonesia and Sri Lanka, the tsunamis have erased at least one million jobs away,sending the unemployment rate soaring, the UN’s labour agency, International LabourOrganization (ILO), says. The majority of these job losses are in fishing, small-scale andplantation agriculture, hotel and tourism and unregistered small businesses.

In a strategy paper, the ILO has urged that employment-intensive job creationstrategies be integrated into the humanitarian and reconstruction response.

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Underwater Tsunami Sensors To be Developed

In India, a tsunami warning system might be developed. This is in answer to researchdone by S.M. Ramasamy, head of the Department of Remote Sensing, BharathidasanUniversity in India. Dr Ramasamy called for underwater sensors to be developed insubduction zones, with indicators of collision impact and wave speed. (The subductionzones are where the tectonic plates ram against each other, pressured by the drifting ofcontinents.) The professor was conducting a lecture entitled Tsunami and the IndianCoasts, as part of the Popular Lecture Series, at St. Joseph’s College in India.

The professor said that the tsunamis, although caused subduction zones by up to60%, cannot be prevented, their impact can be minimised with a fine geological/geomorphologic database.

He added that barring habitations within thousand meters from the coast, creatingmangrove shelter belts and beach avenues and opening bay mouth bars were some ofthe preventive measures that can be done to minimize the impact of any future tsunamisto come.

He said the December 26 tsunami originated in a subduction zone, to a length of1200 km and a breadth of 100 km, causing a depth of 15 meters. The energy releasedwas 4.75 lakh kilo tonnes — 23,000 times the energy released by the atomic bomb thatdestroyed Hiroshima.

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According to a United Nations assessment, the fishingand aquaculture industry in many of the countriesaffected by the tsunamis has been severely hit. And in

many of these affected countries, the problem is compoundedbecause of the importance of fishing as a major food sourcefor the local people and as an important export commodity.

In Sri Lanka, more than 7500 fishers have been killed bythe tsunami and over 5600 are still missing. More than 5000Sri Lankan fishing families have been displaced and 80% ofcoastal fishing vessels have been completely destroyed or veryseriously damaged, including around 19,000 boats. Theinfrastructure has been similarly hit. Ten out of the 12 mainfishing harbors in the country have been completely devastatedincluding infrastructure such as ice plants, cold rooms,workshops and slipways.

In the Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam province of Indonesia,where 42,000 fishers and their families live, 70% of the small-scale fishing fleet have been destroyed. In Nias Island, about800 fishing canoes have been destroyed. And in the capitalBanda Aceh, two-thirds of local fisherfolk were killed.

Fishing IndustriesSeverely Hit by Tsunamis

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Similar levels of destruction have taken place in north-western Indonesia,northern Sumatra, with about 1000 fish cage farms completely destroyed.

In the affected coastal areas of Thailand, 386 fishing villages with apopulation of around 120,000 people have lost about 4,500 fishing boats, ortheir fishing gear has been seriously damaged. Most fishing boats are ownedby small-scale, traditional fishers. The total damage to marine capture fisheriesalone is estimated at around US$16.6 million. Eight fishing harbors and theirinfrastructure have been seriously damaged. The affected aquaculture industryhas suffered a serious setback. A total of around 15,800 fishing cages havebeen damaged; this has caused losses of about US$33 million. In some areas,seafood supplies have dropped by 90% since the tsunami.

The fishing community along the 1000 km coastline in the state of AndhraPradesh, India, were the worst hit by the tsunamis. Around 2000 fishing boatsand 48,000 fishing gears were lost, and about 300,000 fishers have lost theirjobs. In the state of Tamil Nadu, 591 fishing villages and 30 islands of theAndaman and Nicobar islands have been badly affected by the tsunamis.India’s seafood exports may decline by around 30% as a result of the tsunami.

In Myanmar, the some 200 villages spread along the southern coast, whichrely heavily on fishing, have been hit by tsunamis and lost fishing vessels,fishing gear and infrastructure. Some 17 seaside fishing villages have beenreported as destroyed and at least 53 people as killed by the tsunamis. InMalaysia, the livelihoods of about 6000 fishers have been affected by thedisaster.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) hassent fishery experts to the countries affected to access the damage, and advisethe government on the repair and rehabilitation of fishing harbors andinfrastructure, fishing boats and fishing gear. FAO is also looking into the long-term participation in relief and rehabilitation measures for the affected fishingcommunities.