Nations rush aid, but seen falling short
WASHINGTON -- Countries large and small mobilized yesterday in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunamis that spread devastation across South and Southeast Asia, but international officials said the millions of dollars in short-term assistance pledged so far fall way short of the billions needed to address one of the worst natural disasters in memory.
Tents from Italy, drinking water from the Czech Republic, doctors from Israel, and tracking dogs from Spain arrived in regions struck by the walls of water that crashed on nearly a dozen countries Sunday, submerging a third of the Maldives and hitting the island nations of Sri Lanka and Indonesia the hardest.
But Jan Egeland, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, said at a press conference in New York yesterday that much more is needed.
Estimating the long-term cost of the destruction to exceed $5 billion, Egeland appealed to ''rich countries, rich individuals, even those of us who are reasonably affluent, to respond generously."
Yesterday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell pledged $4 million to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies of the $6.5 million the organization said it needed for an immediate response. Powell said US disaster assistance would reach $15 million in the initial phase.
''Some 20-plus thousand lives have been lost in a few moments, but the lingering effects will be there for years," Powell told reporters at a quickly planned press conference. ''The damage that was caused, the rebuilding of schools and other facilities will take time. So you need a quick infusion to stabilize the situation, take care of those who have been injured, get immediate relief supplies in, and then you begin planning for the longer haul."
White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the United States would play a leading role in what he called ''one of the most significant relief, rescue, and recovery challenges that the world has ever known."
But the initial American pledge appeared modest in comparison to other pledges made around the world. The European Union said its assistance could reach $40.5 million, after releasing an initial $4 million yesterday. Australia pledged $7.8 million, about half of the initial US pledge, to assist its neighbors.
In yesterday's press conference, Egeland praised the international response, but contended that wealthier countries give less foreign assistance proportionally than poorer countries, with many well-off nations only setting aside 0.1 or 0.2 percent of their gross national income for foreign assistance.
''We were more generous when we were less rich," Egeland said. ''It is beyond me why are we so stingy, really. . . . Even Christmastime should remind many Western countries at least how rich we have become."
But Ed Fox, the assistant administrator of the US Agency for International Development, took issue with that portrayal, saying that in a year that saw hurricanes tear through the Caribbean, locust plagues in Africa, and dangerous monsoons in Asia, the United States still planned to give generously following the epic earthquake. Fox said the United States also planned to dispatch a 21-member disaster-assistance response team to help with sanitation and other kinds of relief.
''Obviously it is tough to provide money for these kinds of things under any circumstances, and I do think the needs are greater, one can argue, than what we do provide," Fox said in an interview. ''But I think that the US can be very proud of the fact that its contributions worldwide are in fact larger than anybody else's response in this area."
Fox said foreign-assistance funding levels over the last year is actually at ''a near all-time high, rivaling, if not surpassing on a per capita basis, the Marshall Plan." He said that was true of US foreign assistance, even excluding assistance to Iraq.
USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance has increased its contributions to countries in need sharply over the past three years, from $157.7 million in 2001 to $259.6 million in 2002 to $290 million in 2003, according to USAID's annual reports.
But much of that increase went to Afghanistan and Iraq. Aid to Afghanistan grew from $12.5 million in 2001 to $114 million in 2002. Iraq, which is classified as a ''complex disaster," accounted for the office's largest single line item in 2003, with $81.3 million, followed by Sudan, with $42.2 million, the Democratic Republic of Congo, with $31.9 million, and Ethiopia, with $32 million.
Yesterday, Powell said that US embassies in India, Indonesia, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka distributed $100,000 each to their host countries, but that much more would follow. The United States joined about two dozen countries that sent planeloads of supplies, medical personnel, search-and-rescue teams, and disaster-assessment specialists.
A French government plane bound for Sri Lanka carried about 100 doctors, rescue specialists, and communications experts, according to Agence France Presse. Two Russian Il-76 planes flew to Sri Lanka, carrying 25 tons of humanitarian aid, including tents and other emergency supplies, plus a helicopter and rescue specialists, the agency reported.
The US Navy volunteered three P-3 surveillance aircraft from Okinawa, Japan, to conduct survey operations and possible search-and-rescue efforts in Thailand.
The 9 magnitude earthquake that caused the deadly waves was the most powerful in 40 years. It occurred almost exactly one year after a Christmastime earthquake in Bam, Iran, that killed an estimated 26,000 people.
The Bam earthquake prompted the largest humanitarian assistance response in history, Egeland said. Fifty-three countries contributed $18 million to a special UN-coordinated emergency appeal -- about half of what the UN agency asked for -- and hundreds of millions more poured in through other channels of assistance, according to Brian Grogan, spokesman for the UN office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
''We had excellent response in the short term for the Bam earthquake," he said. ''But the initial generosity sort of faded away and the longer-term economic rebuilding of infrastructure in Bam is not getting the same support."
The Bam disaster struck a single location, while the weekend's devastation spread across 3,000 miles, with tsunamis striking the shore from East Africa to Thailand to Malaysia and killing more than 20,000 people.
Yesterday, United Nations officials said that perhaps the most comparable international disaster was Hurricane Mitch, which hit a string of poor countries in Central America in 1998 and killed an estimated 10,000 people.
''The cost of that was estimated by the World Bank to be $5 billion," Egeland said of Hurricane Mitch. ''I feel confident, unfortunately, that this will be bigger."
Officials from international aid agencies scrambled to attend a flurry of meetings to assess the situation -- even as their worried phone calls to their local offices in Asia were met with dead telephone lines and word of missing staff.
Such logistical difficulties have so far prevented the World Bank from conducting a preliminary assessment, according to World Bank spokesman Damien Milverton. ''There are logistical problems, like finding our staff in these countries," Milverton said. ''It's going to take a couple of days before we get moving."
Globe correspondent Alan Wirzbicki contributed to this report. 