ASSOCIATED PRESS A young girl and an elderly man tried to collect water coming from a street in a small pan yesterday to use for household activities after their home was destroyed in the town of Kosgada, southern Sri Lanka. Survivors used cooking utensils and bare hands to dig graves in the aftermath of a huge tidal wave in Sri Lanka as rescuers searching through the debris uncovered thousands of bodies yesterday, bringing the toll in this island to at least 15,000.

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Some isle families
directly touched
by the tsunami

At least four families
have lost loved ones

At least four families in Hawaii have lost loved ones in Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, but a Honolulu city official was overwhelmed with relief when she heard her son and parents were alive.

Kanthi De Alwis: Her son visited her parents several miles inland and survived the disaster Reaching out How to help victims in Sri Lanka: » Items such as clothes and medicine can be dropped off at 810 Pohukaina St. in Kakaako between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. during the weekdays. The building is across from Pipeline Cafe. For more information, call Jan Ching at 531-3017. » Items also can be dropped off at Leeward Community Church at 1860 Komo Mai Drive in Pearl City. For more information, call Pastor Sam Sherrard at 456-3769. BBB warns of fraudulent charity efforts The Better Business Bureau warns that bogus charities will try to take advantage of people who want to help tsunami relief efforts, even while thousands are dead in Asia. "Watch for appeals that are long on emotion, but short on facts on what they're doing to help," said Bennett Weiner, chief operating officer at the Wise Giving Alliance, a BBB affiliate. Fraudulent operations also might push end-of-the-year tax benefits as part of their pitch, noted Anne Deschene, president of the Better Business Bureau of Hawaii. But any extra pressure should be a sign to ask more questions about the organization. True relief organizations will give full information about their finances and efforts and will say exactly where donations will be used. The BBB advises extra caution when dealing with solicitations by Internet and telephone. The alliance also said to avoid giving at local churches or firehouses, which may not have a distribution network. International charities have a better understanding of what is needed, Weiner said.

Dr. Kanthi De Alwis, the city's chief medical examiner, said her son, Ravi Gunatilake, a University of Hawaii medical student, was visiting her parents several miles inland in Sri Lanka when tsunami waves crushed against the coastline, killing tens of thousands on Sunday.

Hakim Ouansafi, president of the Muslim Association of Hawaii, said he heard from four local families in the Muslim community who have lost loved ones. He said other local families have not been able to contact family members in the affected areas.

Ouansafi did not identify the families out of respect for their privacy.

"It's just a complete disaster," said Ouansafi. "We're still in shock."

The death toll continues to rise, and tens of thousands of people have yet to be accounted for in several Southeast Asian countries.

A communal prayer will be held at a mosque in Manoa Friday for the victims, said Ouansafi, who is also helping lead a relief effort. Residents interested in assisting victims can make a monetary donation at the mosque, 1935 Aleo Place, following Friday's prayer.

De Alwis said her son was on his day off at a hospital in Colombo, and left the capital city to visit her parents instead of going to a coastal resort to visit his dad's friends, as planned.

"Thank goodness he survived," she said.

But the father's friend, a doctor from California who is originally from Sri Lanka, lost his wife and daughter in the tsunami, she said.

Gunatilake, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Hawaii, is expected to stay in Sri Lanka for another week to help as a volunteer with the American Red Cross.

Kusuma Cooray, honorary consul for Sri Lanka in Hawaii, said she was relieved once she finally reached her brother by phone yesterday after repeated attempts to contact him since Sunday.

"When I heard his voice, I just cried," said Cooray.

Her brother and sister live in Morutawa, about eight miles from Colombo.

"They were not badly hit. The water came pretty close to their house, but they are OK," said Cooray.

Still, she said her heart remains heavy for her country, which has the highest death toll among the affected countries.

"I still am so sad for my country," said Cooray.

Cooray's brother, Jin De Silva, said he and her sister feared for the lives of their siblings after watching footage of the tsunami on CNN.

"We have had monsoon rains, but nothing like a disaster like this," said De Silva, who manages the Doris Duke estate in Diamond Head.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS A woman cried yesterday at a temporary mortuary of victims of the earthquake and tsunamis at a mosque in Banda Aceh. The Health Ministry said in a statement early today that more than 27,100 people have been killed on Indonesia's Sumatra Island.

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Diseases expected
to double deaths

Authorities dig mass graves
as families in 12 nations grieve,
with thousands still missing

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia » Thousands of bodies lay rotting and unidentified on lawns and streets of battered Sumatra island today and authorities called out bulldozers to dig mass graves, as the number killed in a mammoth earthquake and tsunami soared above 58,000 with tens of thousands still missing. The U.N. health agency warned that disease could double the toll yet again.

Across a dozen countries, millions of people whose homes were swept away or wrecked by raging walls of water Sunday struggled to find shelter.

"My mother, no word! My sisters, brothers, aunt, uncle, grandmother, no word!" yelled a woman at a makeshift morgue in Lhokseumawe, Indonesia. "Where are they? Where are they? I don't know where to start looking."

Along India's southeastern coast, hospital teams stood by to help the injured, but three days after the disaster still spent most of their time tabulating the dead as ambulances hauled in more bodies. A French cultural center in Thailand's capital provided clothes and food for tourist families left with nothing when the sea battered southern beach resorts.

Sri Lanka listed 21,700 people dead, India 4,400 and Thailand 1,500, with the toll expected to rise. A total of more than 300 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania, Seychelles and Kenya.

Officials had not yet counted the dead in two zones that suffered the brunt of both the earthquake and the tsunami that followed: the west coast of Sumatra and India's remote Andaman and Nicobar archipelagos just north of Sumatra.

Purnomo Sidik, national disaster director at Indonesia's Social Affairs Ministry, said 10,000 people had been reported killed in and around Meulaboh, a poor Sumatran town where most people are fishermen or workers on palm oil plantations. In India, police said 8,000 people were missing and feared dead on the two island chains.

Bulldozers stood ready today in Banda Aceh to bury the thousands of dead bodies that littered the streets and lined the front lawns of government offices. With the threat of disease on the rise and few ways to identify the dead, officials said they had no choice but to start burying them in mass graves, said Col. Achmad Yani Basuki. "We will start digging the mass graves today," he said.

Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, a military spokesman, said that naval ships were headed for the west coast with tons of food, water and medicine. He also said the convoy would include a portable hospital.

The flooding uprooted land mines in Sri Lanka -- torn for years by a civil war -- threatening to kill or maim aid workers and survivors attempting to return to what's left of their homes.

Aid groups struggled to mount what they described as the largest relief operation the world has ever seen, and to head off the threat of cholera and malaria epidemics that could break out where water supplies are polluted with bodies and debris.

Dr. David Nabarro, head of crisis operations for the World Health Organization, warned that disease could take as many lives as Sunday's devastation.

"The initial terror associated with the tsunamis and the earthquake itself may be dwarfed by the longer term suffering of the affected communities," he told reporters at the U.N. agency's offices in Geneva.

In southern Thailand's Phang Nga province, where resorts had been packed with thousands of tourists from Europe and elsewhere when the tsunami hit, soldiers and volunteers were still finding bodies lying bloated and rotting in the tropical sun.

Survivors lined up at airports to leave the country, many without relatives or lovers they had come with.

"I saw many kids perish. I saw parents trying to hold them, but it was impossible. It was hell," said Karl Kalteka of Munich, Germany, who lost his girlfriend in the torrent.

Amid the devastation, however, there were miraculous stories of survival. In Malaysia, a 20-day-old baby was found alive on a floating mattress and was reunited with her family.

In Thailand, 2-year-old Hannes Bergstroem, who was found dazed and alone after the waves hit, was claimed by an uncle after his photograph was posted on the Internet.

Media reports said he was reunited with his grandmother. His father and grandfather were believed to be in another hospital in Thailand.

A U.N. agency has said that one-third of the disaster's victims were children.