INDONESIA: "I have been in war and I have been through a number of hurricanes, tornadoes and other relief operations, but I have never seen anything like this," the US Secretary of State said yesterday after a 30-minute helicopter flight over parts of devastated Aceh province on Sumatra island.
Sitting at the open door of a US Seahawk with Mr Jeb Bush, governor of Florida and brother of the US President, Mr Colin Powell saw a flattened and broken landscape where once there were city blocks of houses and thousands of families leading busy lives.
Along what appeared to be the former coastal highway, chunks of the pavement were ripped away in places. Mr Powell saw hundreds of palm trees uprooted and scattered like matchsticks by giant walls of water which crashed ashore on December 26th.
"I cannot begin to imagine the horror that went through families and all of the people who heard this noise coming and then had their lives snuffed out by this wave," Mr Powell told a brief news conference in Banda Aceh before flying to Jakarta to attend an emergency one-day tsunami aid conference today.
The US has promised $350 million in aid as part of a global $2.3 billion relief effort, the biggest humanitarian operation since the second World War. The US military is at the forefront of the relief operation with a flotilla of naval ships. Dozens of military aircraft ferry emergency supplies into Banda Aceh and elsewhere.
Mr Powell promised Washington would send more helicopters, most needed by aid groups to deliver medicines, food and clean water to isolated survivors.
Indonesia says nearly 500,000 of its people in the northern Aceh province are now homeless.
"Only by seeing it in person from a helicopter flying low over the city can there be a real appreciation of what it must have been like when the tsunami came through and caused so much destruction," Mr Powell said.
"I have never seen anything like it in my experience and I have a much better understanding now of what it would take to complete the recovery effort and to help these people rebuild their lives and their homes and their businesses," he said. - (Reuters)