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Published by
International
Orthodox Christian Charities,
March 31, 2005
Island Tsunami
Survivors Getting Help After Earthquake
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March 31, 2005
Baltimore (IOCC) – The people of the Indonesian
island of Nias have now been doubly touched by
tragedy.
Left homeless by the Dec. 26, 2004, earthquake and
tsunami, many of the island’s inhabitants now have
no place to stay because of Monday’s earthquake,
said Yorgos Daskalakis of International Orthodox
Christian Charities (IOCC), who helped provide
assistance to the islanders in late January.
“They were living in makeshift barracks made out
of corrugated metal, and these shelters have now
sustained a lot of damage, or have collapsed
altogether, because of the second earthquake,”
Daskalakis said. “Everybody was expecting a second
tsunami to come and finish the job.”
Once again, IOCC and its partners are responding
to provide life-saving assistance to earthquake
survivors on Nias island.
“It’s a lovely tropical island, but its people are
very poor,” Daskalakis said. “Right now, they
urgently need shelter, food, clean drinking water
and medicines.”
Monday’s 8.7 magnitude earthquake caused extensive
damage and loss of life on the predominantly
Christian island, where humanitarian relief
efforts are being concentrated.
IOCC is working with Church World Service to
provide such critical items as tents, medicines,
water purification equipment and sanitation
facilities to survivors in the capital city of
Gunung Sitoli and other affected areas of Nias
island.
The relief items are being prepared in Medan,
where IOCC’s relief operations are centered, and
include medicine boxes, 1,000 packages of non-food
items (mattresses, blankets, etc.), 500 family
tents, and water purification systems.
Monday’s earthquake killed hundreds of people,
according to news reports, and damaged up to 80
percent of the buildings in Gunung Sitoli. It was
the second major earthquake to hit Indonesia in
three months.
Since the Dec. 26, 2004, earthquake, IOCC and its
partners have been providing life-sustaining
assistance to survivors in Sri Lanka, Indonesia
and Thailand.
That assistance includes nearly 300 medicine
boxes, each with enough medical supplies for 1,000
adults and children for up to three months; fresh
food parcels for people living in temporary camps
and private homes on the east coast of Sumatra;
thousands of health, hygiene and school kits; and
$1.1 million in multi-vitamins, enough to provide
53,000 adults with a daily dose for a month.
Daskalakis and Fr. Chrysostomos Manalu, an
Orthodox priest, traveled to Nias island in late
January to distribute food and school supplies to
people left homeless by the first earthquake and
tsunami. “The places where I was are now
flattened, completely flattened,” he said after
Monday’s earthquake. “It was like a bomb had hit.”
IOCC will continue to support local relief
efforts, as well as rehabilitation and
reconstruction projects, primarily in Indonesia,
in the months to come.
Founded in 1992, IOCC is the official humanitarian
aid agency of the Standing Conference of Canonical
Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA). To learn
more about its humanitarian programs worldwide,
please visit www.iocc.org.
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