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January 5, 2005
[Have an opinion about the issues discussed in this article?
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By Juliana Gittler,
Stars and Stripes Pacific edition
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| (Jim Schulz) A sailor from the USS Abraham Lincoln
carries bags of food to a Navy Seahawk helicopter for distribution
to tsunami-hit coastal communities in Aceh, Indonesia. |
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| A sailor from the USS Abraham Lincoln carries bags of food
to a Navy Seahawk helicopter for distribution to tsunami-hit
coastal communities in Aceh, Indonesia. |
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| A crowd of people desperate for relief gathers beneath a Navy
SH-60B Seahawk delivering aid to Kouati Sounam, Indonesia. |
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| A man clings to the ground and braves the rotor wash in an
effort to reach a landing Navy helicopter delivering aid in
Kouati Sounam, Indonesia. |
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| A woman carries a box of relief aid away from a Navy SH-60B
Seahawk helicopter in Kouati Sounam, Indonesia. |
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| People surge toward a Navy Seahawk delivering aid to Kouati
Sounam, Indonesia. |
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| A man in Kouati Sounam, Indonesia, struggles through the crowd
around a Navy Seahawk helicopter after receiving a box of food.
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| A car in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, rests atop a wall where it
was thrown by devastating tsunamis Dec. 26. More than 4,000
bodies have been removed from the city, Indonesian military
officials said. |
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BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Striking images of disaster color the experience
of serviceme-mbers working in the aftermath of last week’s earthquake
and deadly tsunamis in South Asia.
Flying over Indonesia in a Navy helicopter, Petty Officer 1st Class
Rob Bywater saw entire towns wiped out along the coast.
“When you flew over all you could see is a mosque. You literally
saw hundreds of foundations and nothing else,” he said.
Navy helicopter crewman Petty Officer 2nd Class David Matthews described
the despair as “biblical in proportion.”
On the ground in Banda Aceh, one of the hardest-hit areas, Marine
Capt. Andrew Rice from the defense attaché office in Jakarta saw
bodies piled along the river like floating rubble.
“It looks like a huge amount of debris and then you look closer
and it’s just dozens and dozens of bodies,” he said. “When you’re
out there and see it, you just can’t believe it.”
About a thousand servicemembers are on the ground in Thailand, Indonesia
and Sri Lanka helping in the relief effort; thousands more are offshore
in ships. Air Force C-130s
are moving supplies into the area so Navy SH-60B
Seahawks from the USS
Abraham Lincoln Carrier Group can ferry them to remote villages.
A dozen Seahawks are moving about 25,000 pounds of relief supplies
a day, bringing Indonesian medical teams into remote areas and evacuating
dozens of wounded refugees, said Cmdr. Ted Williams, the executive
officer of Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron (VAQ) 131, part
of Carrier Air Wing 2 from the Everett, Wash.-based Lincoln.
Sailors throughout the ship volunteered to fly out to airstrips
each morning to load and unload supplies onto the helicopters all
day.
Aboard the helicopters, crewmen see the devastation.
“I still can’t believe what happened,” said Petty Officer 2nd Class
Gilbert Salinas, a rescue swimmer. “You just see where towns used
to be. The foundations are still there but the rest is in ruins.”
At several villages, helicopters dropped boxes down to surging crowds
struggling to reach the aid. In one location, a man crawled through
mud, gripping remaining plant roots to brace against the rotor wash
so he could be first to reach a box of biscuits.
“If you throw out a sandwich they’ll fight over it. These people
are hungry,” Matthews said. “When they saw the helo, it gave them
a sense of hope.”
Despite constant sorties, thousands of boxes of relief aid have
piled up in places such as Bangkok, Thailand and Jakarta as well
as remote airstrips, where a lack of space for aircraft, ground
crew and simple pallets and forklifts has slowed the distribution
process. U.S. military aircraft mingle with civilian and military
planes from around the world. “
All these places are maxed out,” said Air Force 1st Lt. KC Young,
a C-130 pilot with the 36th Expeditionary Airlift Wing from Yokota
Air Base, Japan. U.S. may send more copters Military aircraft
have begun bringing in pallets, forklifts and trucks to expedite
the distribution in Indonesia, where boxes of relief supplies are
piling up alongside the runway.
“It feels like the logjam is breaking open and aid is getting in,”
said Tim Gerhardson, assistant press attaché at the U.S. Embassy
in Jakarta. “We’re in high gear now and everything is moving.”
Military officials anticipate the relief effort will last for months.
Once aid distribution is flowing consistently, sailors from the
ships and civil affairs soldiers will begin reconstruction efforts,
officials said.
For servicemembers such as Matthews, the effort is worth long hours
of constant flying.
“I don’t want to go back to the ship. I wish I could fly more hours
a day, there’s so much to be done.”
U.S. may send more copters
The U.S. military might double its number of helicopters in tsunami-stricken
areas, according to Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of the U.S. Pacific
Command.
There are currently 46 military helicopters in the area, according
to staffers who spoke with Stripes after Fargo briefed Pentagon
reporters on Tuesday.
Fargo was asked if the U.S. planned to move more helicopters in,
given their obvious advantages.
“I would say probably double the number we have right now. … Just
based on the flow that I’ve looked at, and if we find that we can’t
address those concerns that we have, then we’ll reach farther.”
Fargo said that based on the U.S. military’s recent disaster response
in the Philippines and its 1991 experiences with humanitarian operations
in Bangladesh, officials knew that helicopters, more than any other
transport, are the most useful machines for these kinds of situations.
“A key lesson from all of these events was the value of helicopter
vertical lift,” Fargo said.
Jim Schulz and Lisa Burgess contributed to this story.
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©2005 Stars & Stripes. All opinions
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