ULLE, Sri Lanka — Mark Stinson and the two other American doctors huddled on a beach and plotted their rules of engagement -- not for war, but to bring medical aid to an impoverished community so isolated that it doesn't even rate a mention on most local maps.
"Remember, no medical aid is administered until we have order, so people all don't come at us all at once," Stinson warned. "Draw a demarcation line, and get a local official to man it so that we're not seen as the bad guys. Then, we go ahead and treat people, one patient at a time."
The tsunami killed more than 1,000 people here, one-sixth of the residents who eked out a living from fishing, rice farming and tourists drawn to some of the world's best surfing. Many of the town's homes were washed away, and 1,000 people were still missing.
Once connected to the island of Sri Lanka, Ulle awoke Dec. 26 to find itself an island. A bridge that linked the town to Pottuvil, a mainland village across a wide causeway, was also heavily damaged.
As the sun set on a humid evening Thursday, battered Sri Lankan military boats ferried residents and the first trickle of supplies. Nearby, snarling wild dogs eyed the mostly perishable cargo. One howled at the rising moon while another gnawed on a rotting goat carcass that had washed ashore.
Grim-faced men and boys stacked rice bales, bottled water and clothing on the edge of a washed-out cricket field. Many had lost their entire extended families along with homes and possessions. "This is not the right moment for grief; now is a time to battle for our own survival," said one man who lost a dozen relatives who lived in houses along the beach.
Despite the international relief pouring into the countries hit by the tsunami, only a trickle, mostly from Sri Lankans, has reached places like Ulle. Separated from the capital, Colombo, by submerged jungle roads that are in poor condition even in good times, residents in Ulle largely have been left to fend for themselves.
This is precisely the kind of place Stinson and Neil Jayasekera had in mind when they left San Francisco on New Year's Day on a personal quest to help victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami.
The Bay Area doctors, volunteers for the Los Angeles-based humanitarian group Relief International, took two weeks of unpaid leave from their hospital emergency room jobs to serve as an aid reconnaissance team for the agency, which helps disaster-torn communities around the world.
