Devastation
underscores the
scope of charity

Flights helping remote areas are
likely to go on for several weeks

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia » Drive through the tsunami- and earthquake-ravaged areas of this city, and the death toll -- estimated at more than 200,000 -- starts to make sense.

Everything has been reduced to piles of rubble. Concrete foundations are all that is left of homes. Boats are washed ashore, miles inland. In some places the second floors of buildings have collapsed onto the first floors, likely from the magnitude-9.0 earthquake, and then the waters came and wiped out the other buildings.

On assignment Star-Bulletin reporter Craig Gima is traveling through Southeast Asia to report on relief efforts for people across 11 countries devastated by the Dec. 26 quake and tsunamis.

Similar scenes are found in the other major city in western Sumatra, Meulalaboh, and in all the villages in between.

It is as if everything on the coasts of Oahu and the other major islands -- all the homes and businesses -- was destroyed and all of the people killed or left homeless.

"It's like what you would imagine if there were a nuclear war," said Army Maj. Nelson Chang, a former Moanalua resident who is helping coordinate the U.S. military response with the Indonesian military.

At the Banda Aceh airport, helicopters leave every 10 or 15 minutes carrying food, juice and water to areas still inaccessible or difficult to reach, nearly a month after the Dec. 26 disaster. It is an aerial lifeline that is likely to continue for several weeks. More than 1,200 missions have been flown to deliver more than 3.4 million pounds of supplies since Jan. 1.

The Marine general in charge of the U.S. military effort in Indonesia said, for the most part, the U.S. military has accomplished its mission and that it is time to have civilian agencies and the Indonesians take over the duty of caring for the displaced and rebuilding the region.

The most satisfying part of the mission, Marine Gen. Christian Cowdrey said, was how military and civilian aid workers from all over the world came together to help their fellow man.

"We are all human beings. We can join hands," said Cowdrey, who delivered the Star-Bulletin as a child growing up in Kailua when his father was stationed at Pearl Harbor.

Some aid is getting through without military help. Truck convoys are leaving from Medan and Banda Aceh to western Sumatra and other affected areas.

But there are so many different nongovernment organizations here that coordination is still a problem. At the TNI Hospital, so much medicine has been delivered that the boxes are stacked on the sidewalk, exposed to heat and humidity. The situation is the same at other medical facilities in other cities.

At coordination meetings the different medical aid groups here are trying to catalog the supplies and set up some kind of central distribution system so that the medicines do not go to waste.

In the long term, aid workers are still wary of the Indonesian military and the insurgency here. There is concern about corruption, whether shelters built to house the homeless might later be turned into barracks, and whether the military might use security concerns to deny aid to some areas.

Yesterday was an important Muslim holiday here.

Eid al-Adha, or the Festival of Sacrifice, celebrates what Muslims believe was Abraham's unselfish decision to sacrifice his only son to God. In turn, God spared the boy and a sheep was slaughtered instead. In remembrance, celebrants now sacrifice sheep, goats or other animals, which traditionally are given to friends, family and the poor.

This year, the occasion is being marked by the slaughter of cows and other animals that are being given to the poor -- mostly everyone here. U.S. aid and relief workers here donated two cows to the local mosque.

CRAIG GIMA / CGIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM Tech Sgt. Walter Fujioka flashes a shaka sign as he displays medical cargo aboard an Air Force C-130 plane bound for Utapao, Thailand.

Airmen take on
mission of aloha

Troops with isle ties connect with
victims as they deliver cargo

UTAPAO, Thailand » From his perch on the flight deck of an Air Force C-130, Capt. O.G. Torres, a Pearl City and University of Hawaii graduate, can see the dividing line between devastation and survival in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

Torres, a navigator with the 36th Airlift Squadron out of Yokota, Japan, has flown missions to Banda Aceh, Burma, Sri Lanka and Phuket, Thailand, delivering relief supplies.

"In Banda Aceh it's clear where the water went," he said. "The parts of the city near the airport did not suffer damage, while below the tsunami line, everything is wiped out."

For Tech Sgt. Walter Fujioka, another Pearl City High School graduate, the mission is clear: "We're spreading the aloha."

Fujioka, a load master also with the 36th out of Yokota, has flown more than 30 sorties and helped deliver more than 240,000 pounds of relief supplies for tsunami survivors with his C-130 crew.

"It feels good that we may be easing their suffering," he said.

Though the actual number of Hawaii units deployed for Operation Unified Assistance is small, Hawaii airmen, sailors, soldiers and Marines are spreading the aloha in units scattered throughout Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

Staff Sgt. Daniel "Buddha" DeMotta, a former Honolulu lifeguard who graduated from the Academy of the Pacific, helped evacuate orphans and seniors from flood-damaged areas in Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

"It's utter devastation," DeMotta said of what he has seen.

DeMotta is an Air Force Raven. "It's like an air marshal on Air Force flights," he said.

When he first got to Thailand, he was put to work building coffins, something that put the mission into perspective.

On the flights, he has been able to talk to some of the tsunami victims. One man told him of having to choose between saving his mother or his sister and having to let his sister go.

The people he met have lost everything, including their way of making a living, DeMotta said.

"Being from Hawaii, where people make their living from the sea ... a lot of these people are fishermen, and they don't ever want to return to the sea."

Helping Fujioka load a cargo of medical supplies for Phuket, Thailand, was Tracy Stocks, a member of the Air Mobility Group from Travis Air Force Base in California.

Riding the bus back to the Ambassador City hotel complex where U.S. military forces are staying, he said he sat behind a reserve colonel who started talking about his job as a teacher in Hawaii at Campbell High School.

"I'm like, 'I went to Campbell,'" Stocks said.

Stocks said he can see the progress of the mission by the type of cargo that is going out. First there were body bags along with food, followed by medical supplies and tents. Now there is more building material.

Because Hawaii has also suffered from tsunamis, seeing the devastation has had an additional impact on the Hawaii airmen.

"I don't want to live near the beach. I'm glad my parents' house overlooks Pearl Harbor instead of being next to Pearl Harbor," Torres said.

DeMotta's grandparents survived one of the tsunamis that hit Hilo.

"Now I know what they went through," he said.