In Sri Lanka, on the road from the capital, Colombo, to Galle, the southern city that is emerging as a distribution and logistical hub for aid groups, the landscape is a testament to the destructive power of the wave and the frailty of man-made structures.
Community after community lies devastated, buildings gone, people missing, souls extinguished. There's a bleak sameness: Boats sit on the land, parts of houses are in the sea, water and sewer pipes jut into the air, and telephone poles have been driven into the ground.
Everywhere are images that defy normal expectations: Fishing boats wedged like missiles into walls, twisted steel rebar poking from broken concrete like so many arthritic fingers, vehicles perched atop stone walls as though in some extreme sport. "This stretch of road used to be really beautiful, all green and sandy," said Previne Wickramasinghe, a volunteer on an aid convoy who, like many others here, has put aside his normal life to help Sri Lanka get back on its feet. "Look. Now there's nothing left."
Still, there are signs of progress. Jerry Porodo, co-founder of Impakt, an independent group of international volunteers transporting aid, said detours were being created around washed-out roads, cutting down transport time. He said it took supply trucks as long as eight hours to make the 80-mile trip from Colombo to Galle immediately after the destruction, but the time had been reduced by as much as half.
And aid officials said the situation was rapidly entering a second phase. In the first few days after the disaster there were shortages of everything. Now huge aircraft from all over the world are landing in Colombo, bearing not just food, clothing and medicine, but bulldozers and roofing material.
Although some shortages of basic supplies remain, the focus is increasingly on rebuilding roads, bridges and buildings, working out transportation bottlenecks and avoiding duplication.
In Indonesia, the government has partially restored electricity in the provincial capital Banda Aceh. Asplund said the U.N. has been able to drop boxes of high-nutrition biscuits, noodles and rice from helicopters to some hard-to-reach villages on the northern tip of Sumatra. But, he said, they needed ships to bring in large-scale supplies.
"The scale of the disaster is overwhelming," said Asplund, a career humanitarian worker.
