RELIEF AND RECOVERY AFTER THE 2004 INDIAN OCEAN TSUNAMI

AFTER THE 2004 INDIAN OCEAN TSUNAMI

US Navy SH-60B Seahawk helicopter lands to drop off relief supplies to tsunami survivors in Sumatra

After the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami emphasis was placed more on the living than the dead. Some people predicted an outbreak of disease. There were concerns about malaria and dengue fever being spread by mosquitos in pools of water left behind by the tsunami (some mosquitos that carried these diseases can breed in salt water and brackish water as well as fresh water). There were worries about dysentery, tetanus, severe diarrhea, typhoid, cholera and hepatitis from the presence of dead bodies, contaminated water, lack of toilets, poor sanitation. Outbreaks of disease largely did not happen. Local doctors and ordinary people were credited with achieving as much as foreign relief agencies.

United Nations general secretary Kofi Annan said, “This an unprecedented global catastrophe that requires an unprecedented global response.” catastrophe A quick response by relief agencies and local people also prevented malnutrition and starvation. For the most part food supplies were able to get where they were needed in a timely fashion. Many people survived on rice, sweet biscuits and instant noodles that had been provided by aid groups and local donors. Diarrhea was often the worst health problem and it was less severe when potable water was available. Aid workers tried prevent to dehydration. There were some problems with injuries becoming infected due to lack of medicines.

People Internally Displaced by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami
Country — Total
India — 730,000
Indonesia — 572,926
Sri Lanka — 516,150
Maldives — 11,231
Malaysia — 8,000
Thailand — 6,000
Myanmar — 3,200
East Africa — 2,320
Totals 1,849,827
[Source: Reuters, December 16, 2009]

Heavy rains hit many areas after the tsunami. The large amount of standing water caused worries about malaria. An effort was made to get mosquito netting to places where the danger of malaria was the highest and fumigate areas with lots of stagnant water, where mosquitos can breed. Some of the camps for victims were invaded with biting red ants. Looting was a problem in some places. But in some cases determining what was looting and what was reasonably justifiable scavenging was difficult. Police didn’t arrest very many people for looting in part because many of the jails were washed away and there was no place to put prisoners.

Marianne Szegedy-Maszak wrote in U.S. News and World Report: "As each day passes, many other lives are claimed by disease and untreated injuries. Then there are those who are physically all right but who struggle to cope with the shattering burden of grief, terror, and loss. One man from Sri Lanka says he has not slept for days because each time he closes his eyes he sees his wife and child swept out to their death. A 13-year-old boy from Banda Aceh remembers seeing the killer wave and hearing his father shout, "Run! Run!" He last saw his parents swept away in the roiling water. "What makes this so devastating to survivors is that the very things that they need to recover emotionally — the attachment to other people, the support of the community — have all been torn out from beneath them," says Jon Allen, a psychologist with Baylor College of Medicine and the author of Coping With Trauma.[Source: Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, U.S. News and World Report, January 17, 2005]

Relief Organizations, Money and the December 2004 Tsunami

The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami generated the largest relief effort since World War II and was larger than even that in terms of a concentrated effort over a large area in a relatively short period with little preparation time. As of December 2005, a year after the disaster, more than $13.6 billion had been pledged by governments, aid agencies and private donors, according to the United Nations, making it the most generously funded humanitarian effort in history. What was perhaps even better news was that much more of the money that was pledged was paid in a timely fashion which was not the case after other major disasters such as Hurricane Mitch and the Bam earthquake in Iran. [Source: Somini Sengupta and Seth Mydans, New York Times, December 25, 2005]

Total aid pledges, including official aid and private donations, amounted to around $13.6 billion, more than enough to rebuild. The money donated by private individuals was on a scale never before seen. So much money was pledged that a month after the disaster the Red Cross said that it had collected enough money and was winding down its fund-raising effort. Medicins sans Frontiers also said that it had received enough. It suggested offering money for other places like the Congo and Sudan. [Source: Reuters, 2009]

More than100 United Nations agencies and humanitarian groups provided assistance. Major groups involved in the relief effort included the Red Cross, OXFAM, CARE, UNICEF and the WHO. The United Nations World Food Program fed 1.75 million people. As of late March 2004, it moved 50,000 tons of food to stricken areas using helicopters, planes, cargo ships, landing crafts and trucks. Smaller groups included medical teams from Pakistan and China, search and rescue teams with dogs from the UAE, and engineers from Spain and New Zealand. Even Afghanistan sent a team and North Kore gave some money.

The United States pledged $1 billion in relief aid to tsunami-hit countries. At first the Bush administration pledged only $35 million and was widely criticized for being tight. A few days later it upped the figure to $315 million. Australia, whose population is one twentieth that of the United States, donated $771 million in grants and loans over five years. Germany donated $674 million; Japan, $550 million; and Norway, $182 million. Some of the rich Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were also criticized for not giving more. Initially, Saudi Arabia had pledged only $30 million and Kuwait. $10 million. Around the same it was revealed that Kuwait was running a $10 billion government surplus. Within weeks after the disaster governments pledged over $2 billion. Japan pledged the most ($500 million) and gave almost all of it immediately.

Debt repayments for some affected countries were suspended until the end of 2005, with deferred amounts paid over five years. The Asian Development Bank promised $675 million in assistance to Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The areas hit by the disaster had limited insurance and huge debts. The idea of debt relief was a controversial one, namely because the South Asian countries received it while African countries hit by equally devastating disasters didn’t.

So much money was donated for 2004 tsunami relief that a few months after the tsunami Doctors Without Borders began asking donors to send unrestricted funds and tracked down tens of thousands of people who had already donated money and asked if the money could be used for other causes.

Relief Effort After the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami

Relief agencies at first focused on helping national health authorities deal with vulnerable survivors and organizing the safe burial of the dead. Priority was also given to monitoring risks to health through early warning disease systems and supporting recovery of countries’ health systems. Ministries of health, WHO and other partners quickly did health assessments to determine survivors’ most pressing needs.[Source: World Health Organization, June 1, 2005]

Relief for the December 2004 tsunami came in two stages: 1) the emergency response; and 2) reconstruction and rehabilitation. Early emergency relief efforts included food drops of instant noodles, bags of rice, bottled water, medicines and “basic medical kits.” Water purification centers were set up. The water was purified and loaded onto to trucks and taken to villages where wells were contaminated. Wells that had been contaminated with salt water and debris were pumped out and chlorinated. Obviously more could have been done and people died that should have been saved but the extent of the disaster was vast. Because so many roads were out, helicopters were essential in getting basic supplies to where they were needed most.

There was a lot of confusion and lack of centralization as groups with their own agendas arrived at the sites of destruction. Micheal Dobbs wrote in the Washington Post: “An army of would-be philanthropists descended on...the tsunami-affected countries. There, of course, were the big relief agencies like CARE and Doctors Without Borders...And there were private individuals...who simply wanted to help...Some of the assistance has been extremely effective. Some of it has been next to useless. And some of it is spawning new conflicts and rivalries, upsetting the local power structure in ways that were often incomprehensible to outsiders.”

Foreigners who thought they were helping out were instead reviled by local people because they took work away from them. Replacing lost fishing boats proved to be no simple matter. People that never boats to begin with, for example, filed claims. Others that lost their boats filed claims with a number of different agencies. Rich people intimated the poor.

Some of the food aid came in the form of things that local people didn’t like. Some people who eat mostly rice and noodles were given large bags of soy flour and were unable to figure out what to do with it. There were also problems with getting help to where it was needed most. In some places there were no aid organizations. In other places there were so many they squabbled over who would perform the next operation. Other problems included duplication and simply finding a way to get goods to where they were needed. In some cases relief groups promised space on helicopters or planes into the disaster areas were dumped to make room for visits by VIPs.

United States and the Relief Effort and the Great Tsunami of 2004

Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in The New Yorker: “There were familiar elements in the responses of the Bush Administration. Two days after the disaster, a White House spokesman, asked why President Bush himself had so far remained silent, explained, “He didn’t want to make a symbolic statement about “we feel your pain.” On the third day, the President finally voiced his condolences in person, and two days later the government’s emergency-aid allotment, initially pegged at fifteen million dollars, was raised to three hundred and fifty million, where it remains. On the eighth day, even as Secretary of State Colin Powell, in Thailand, was saying that enough money was at hand, Bush, now back at the White House, appeared side by side with his father, George H. W. Bush (whom he had never before granted such a public role), and his father’s successor, Bill Clinton (the object of his spokesman’s snideness), to announce that he was appointing them to lead a private fund-raising drive in the United States. [Source: Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker, January 17, 2005]

“We’re a very generous, kindhearted nation,” the President said on December 29th. And so we are. But it is unseemly to boast about it at such a moment. It would be unseemly even if it were not the case that Australia, Germany, and Japan have been considerably more generous in absolute terms and perhaps a dozen other countries have been more so in per-capita terms. “We’re showing the compassion of our nation in the swift response,” Bush said on January 3rd. “But the greatest source of America’s generosity is not our government — it’s the good heart of the American people.” That is true, too; but it is also true, or should be, that in a democracy a government’s generosity is an expression of a people’s heart, not something separate from it. There is reason to worry that the Administration regards private relief efforts as a partial replacement for, rather than as a supplement to, the efforts of the United States government; and reason to worry, too, that the funds for tsunami relief will come at the expense of victims of disasters yet to occur. According to the Times, the Administration plans to use money from the disaster-and-famine-assistance program of the United States Agency for International Development, whose budget for this year is $384.9 million, and consulted with “senior Republican lawmakers” to try “to cover the costs of this disaster without undermining Mr. Bush’s other priorities,” such as “making his tax cuts permanent.”

“A few influential Republicans, however, are beginning to say that America should help the victims of the tsunami without beggaring other assistance programs, and if their view prevails then our aid will indeed be, as the Administration insists, an expression of “American values.” But these are American values that, at least for the moment, are also manifestly German values and Japanese values and Norwegian and Swedish and Spanish and British values and Sri Lankan and Indian values — values that are, like the victims of the tsunami, simply human.

Celebrities and the Tsunami Relief Effort

Celebrities that donated 2004 tsunami relief included Sandra Bullock, who donated $1 million to the American Red, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Who gave substantial donation to UNICEF to support relief efforts for children affected by the tsunami, particularly in Thailand. Major television networks organized a prime-time tsunami relief telethon featuring prominent entertainers, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Clay Aiken, and Debra Messing. Country singer Willie Nelson headlined a tsunami-relief benefit concert in Texas, while artists in Asia organized their own initiatives. A Chinese-language version of the 1985 charity song “We Are the World” was produced to support tsunami relief, featuring well-known performers such as Jackie Chan, Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, and other leading Hong Kong entertainers. [Source: bostonherald.com, January 5, 2005]

Hollywood stars and pop singers that participated in the Tsunami Aid Telethon included Leonardo DiCaprio, Bruce Willis, Madonna, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Meg Ryan, Tim Robbins, George Clooney, Clint Eastwood, Robert DeNiro, Catherine Zeta Jones, Matt Damon and Halle Berry. Sanda Bullock donated $1 million to the American Red Cross for tsunami relief. DeCaprio donated large amounts of money but didn’t disclose exactly how much. Race car driver Michael Schumacher donated $19 million. U.S. President George Bush donated $10,000.

A concert in Malaysia with Lauryn Hill, the Backstreet Boys, Black Eyed Peas, Boys II Men and Hong Kong’s Nicholas Tse and Yumiko Cheng, Indonesia’s Ruth Sahanaya and Malaysia’s Sheila Majd drew 15,000 people and took in $2.6 million. A concert at a stadium in Cardiff, Wales with Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Ozzy Osborne, Elton John, the Manic Street Preachers, Keane and Charlotte Church drew 60,000 people. It was dubbed the largest charity show since the Live Aid show in 1985. Former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush headed United States fund-raising efforts for tsunami relief. Clinton was named as a United Nations envoy for environmental relief. The two former presidents visited disaster sites in Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Maldives and Aceh. One of their main goals was to head off donor fatigue and keep the money flowing in.

In Norway, children sold their Christmas presents to raise money, AP reported: “French pupils and Danish inmates took up collections, and cell phone users are giving via text message. Asia's tsunami disaster has sparked an extraordinary wave of generosity from Greenland to Greece, from corner bakers donating proceeds to sports clubs selling T-shirts to Dutch children going door-to-door.

Relief Effort Scams and Corruption

There were a number of scams especially on the Internet that cheated potential donors out of their money. People on the streets of the United States and Europe collected money for tsunami relief and then kept the money for themselves. Donations were taken over the Internet for relief projects that did not exist. People who were scammed sent money to offshore accounts in places like Cyprus. Some of the schemes were just plain mean. One British man logged on to a site for relatives looking for information on their loved ones and sent messages that everyone they were looking for was dead.

There were reports of money being siphoned off by corrupt government officials that was intended for relief. Buddhist, Muslim and even some Christian leaders were suspicious of evangelical groups that mixed proselytizing with humanitarian aid. Some Muslim charity groups were also quite forthcoming about their radical Islamic views.

Michael Vatikiotis wrote in the New York Times, With all the money and aid pouring into the region after the Dec. 26 tsunami, there is a more urgent need to address corruption as there are widespread fears that much of this largesse, amounting to more than $7 billion in public and private pledges, will find its way into the pockets of unscrupulous people. Many are wondering if all this political resolve to fight corruption is real or merely rhetorical. [Source: Michael Vatikiotis, New York Times, January 27, 2005]

“Witness the sordid tales from hard-hit areas in Aceh of extortion and theft by security officials, or of the threat to land owners in devastated Phuket, where big developers are said to be counting on the chaos to push out local people so they can acquire more prime beachfront. One of the first fears Indonesian legislators expressed after the tsunami was that money meant for rehabilitation would end up in the wrong hands. Some urged that along with emergency medical aid, the government should also send auditors. Ironically, the incumbent governor of Aceh, Abdullah Puteh, was confronted with corruption charges on the day of the tsunami.

“The story is not so very different in Thailand. "In tsunami land, the bad guys have already put up signs saying: 'Building Prohibited,'" reports Joe Maier, an American Catholic priest who has spent the past 30 years protecting slum-dwellers from land-grabbers in Bangkok. On his arrival in Phuket, he said the loudest complaints he heard were from locals fearing they would be prevented from rebuilding their homes.

Impact of the 2004 Tsunami on Local Economies and Tourism

Immediately after the disaster unemployment soared from 7 percent to 33 percent in Aceh Province and 9 percent to 20 percent in affected areas of Sri Lanka. But once things settled down a bit, the disaster helped create job, mainly through construction needed for rebuilding. Currency rates and stock prices were not affected that much by the tsunami. Financial experts believed that what ever losses would be sustained by loss of tourism would be offset by growth from foreign aid and rebuilding.

Fishing had traditionally been the most important industry and way to make a living in areas struck by the tsunami. The fishing industry was devastating by the tsunami. Many fishermen lost their boats. Demand for fish dried up out of fear that fish harvested from tsunami-hit areas had fed on the flesh of human tsunami victims that had been washed out to sea. It took some times to rebuild boats. Fish farms, a source of income for 10 percent of the population in tsunami-affected areas and a source of prawns, milkfish and other seafood, were destroyed. Agricultural land and water supplies near the shore were contaminated by salt water. Among those who made out well after the tsunami were scrap dealers, who took in scavenged metal and plastic and resold it; landlords who demanded and got inflated rents from journalists and relief workers; and boat owners. Insurance companies paid out less for the tsunami than they usually do for a large U.S. hurricane.

The overall effect on the economies was minimal. The hardest hit areas were poor and contributed relatively small proportions to the overall economy. In many cases the economy was boosted by the flow of donation money and jobs created by reconstruction. Often, those that were affected the worst were those living just above the poverty line. In some cases the disaster put them below it. The very poor had so little to begin with they didn’t have much to lose.

One year after the disaster AP reported: “Local economies are starting to recover, with more than half the people who lost jobs across the region now back at work, Oxfam said. Thousands of hectares ruined by saltwater and mud have been desalinated and cleared, and many farmers already had successful harvests...Thanks in part to the massive response of the international community, 60 percent of the people who lost their jobs are earning a living again and most of the tens of thousand of destroyed fishing boats have been replaced.”

Countries that rely on tourism were hurt the most by the tsunami, which destroyed a large amount of tourism property and infrastructure and scared off many people. The tourism industry was hurt but tourism officials in the countries affected by the tsunami complained that foreign governments misrepresented the extent of the damage. To attract customers, hotels offered special deals and airlines lowered their fares.

Describing the impact of the disaster on tourism, Lisa Kalis and James Brooke wrote in the New York Times, The impact on tourism may be limited. In the main tourist destinations affected - the beach resorts of Thailand and Sri Lanka and all of the Maldives islands - the majority of hotels are ready for business. Of those hotels that were damaged, many should reopen within months.

When it comes to tourism, the region has faced bigger challenges. Rakesh Shankar, an economist specializing in Asia with the research group Economy.com, said the tsunami's impact would be far less than the SARS outbreak, which kept tourists away from Asia for two years. "The question is: Are countries going to have the infrastructure to deal with it?" Shankar said. He expected that tourism mostly would be back to normal by the summer in Thailand and within a year in Sri Lanka. However, in the Maldives, he said full recovery could take two or three years. [Source: Lisa Kalis and James Brooke, New York Times, January 16, 2005]

Coral Reefs Recover Relatively Quickly After the 2004 Tsunami

Early surveys found that as much as 30 percent of coral reefs in Indonesia, Thailand, India, and Sri Lanka had been damaged by the powerful waves and associated debris from the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Scientists initially estimated that full recovery of many reef systems could take a decade or longer, depending on environmental conditions and conservation efforts. [Source: Andrew Baird, Associated Press, Wildlife Conservation Society, December 26, 2008; Michael Casey, The Associated Press, December 26 2008]

However, studies conducted four years after the disaster revealed that many coral reefs in Indonesia's Aceh Province were recovering more rapidly than expected. Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society, working with the Indonesian government and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, examined 60 reef sites along approximately 800 kilometers (497 miles) of coastline. Their surveys found widespread natural regeneration, with young corals establishing themselves in damaged areas and new coral colonies appearing on reefs that had previously been degraded by destructive fishing practices.

Scientists attributed the recovery to both natural ecological processes and improved management of marine resources. Following the tsunami, many local communities reduced or abandoned destructive fishing methods such as dynamite fishing, while conservation programs encouraged reef protection and coral transplantation projects. According to researchers, these measures helped create favorable conditions for coral growth and accelerated the recovery of damaged ecosystems. The findings demonstrated the resilience of coral reefs when environmental pressures are reduced and habitats are given the opportunity to regenerate.

The recovery of coral reefs carried important economic as well as environmental benefits. Healthy reefs provide fish that support local livelihoods and food supplies, while also attracting tourists interested in diving and marine recreation. The United Nations estimated that Aceh alone lost more than $330 million in reef-related economic value as a result of the tsunami. As reef systems recovered, they contributed to the broader reconstruction of coastal communities that had suffered enormous human and economic losses during the disaster.

Experts noted that the rapid rebound was consistent with observations from other reef systems around the world. Coral specialists explained that while the tsunami physically shattered many reefs, surviving coral fragments and larvae were able to recolonize damaged areas when left undisturbed. Similar recovery patterns have been observed on sections of Australia's Great Barrier Reef following major natural disturbances. Researchers emphasized that the findings provided a rare example of positive environmental recovery at a time when coral reefs worldwide face increasing threats from climate change, pollution, and coastal development.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Encyclopedia.com, Library of Congress, Indonesia Tourism website (indonesia.travel), Indonesia government websites, Live Science, The Conversation, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Google AI, Wikipedia, The Guardian and various websites, books and other publications.

Last updated June 2026