Katrina victims seek recovery tips in Asia
United States victims of Hurricane Katrina are visiting Southeast Asia to learn how Thailand and Indonesia recovered swiftly from the Indian Ocean tsunami.
Four representatives of poor communities in hurricane-hit New Orleans met tsunami victims at Phuket and Phang Nga yesterday. It was part of a journey that takes them to Indonesia's Aceh - the most heavily affected region. Nearly 300,000 people, including 230,000 in Indonesia alone, died when giant walls of water triggered by an earthquake in northern Sumatra devastated Indian Ocean nations on Boxing Day 2004. Hurricane Katrina in August last year killed more than 1,800 people in the United States, making it that country's deadliest and costliest natural disaster since the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane, also known as Hurricane San Felipe Segundo. Recovery has been slow - notably for the poor of New Orleans, said Pam Dashiell, a member of the visiting delegation. She blamed the federal government at all levels for inefficiency. "The problem is the government at all levels has not played a real role. People are working hard to make things happen but the government has not done what it needs to do," she said from Phuket yesterday. Local people in New Orleans have worked to help one another and lobbied the government to get necessities, she said. The group learned of the experience of tsunami victims at a Vancouver conference earlier this year. Somsook Boonyabancha, director of the Community Organisation Development Institute (Codi) organised this week's trip so they could see how things were in real life. Codi is a public organisation under the supervision of the Social Development and Human Security Ministry. The New Orleans visitors include three black Americans and an American-Vietnamese priest. They exchanged information with people at Phang Nga's Ban Nam Khem and the Morgan sea gypsy community of Tap Tawan. They hope what they have learned will help beat bureaucratic red tape at home. The Americans will apply strategies and tactics used in Thailand to regain the homes they had to abandon after the hurricane, Dashiell said. Many tsunami victims struggled for months afterward to return to their homes. Many properties were claimed by the wealthy and powerful.
Supalak Ganjanakhundee The Nation
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