Posted on: Saturday, January 8, 2005

Center's tsunami fund at $235,000

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer

While announcing yesterday that the East-West Center Tsunami Relief Fund had raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars, catastrophe specialist Allen Clark mentioned "a little-known fact" that puts the urgency for such an undertaking into proper perspective:

"With this one disaster we have now doubled the number of displaced people in the world," said Clark, who is the executive director of the Pacific Disaster Center, which operates in partnership with the East-West Center.

"That means the level of activity has to go up over 100 percent just to handle this one single disaster."

Center President Charles Morrison said the world has never responded so generously to people in need. He accepted a check for $235,000 from Don Horner, president and CEO of First Hawaiian Bank, which assisted by collecting money at all its branches.

The money came in from thousands of kids, schools, parents and concerned individuals, as well as folks who attended a special fund-raising performance at the East-West Center on Sunday, he said.

"The main purpose of this is to give a big mahalo to the Hawai'i community ... who have supported the tsunami relief effort," said Morrison, who added that the money will be distributed to organizations working directly with affected tsunami victims.

Morrison said those groups selected so far include WALHI, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment; Sarvodaya, a Sri Lankan relief organization; and Uplift International, which is providing medical supplies. Each will receive $30,000.

He also said the fund remains open, for those who would like to make a donation.

The East-West Center has an obligation to remain involved in the relief effort for the long term, Morrison stressed.

Part of the plan will focus on restoring primary and secondary education institution programs in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

"Over the longer term we're looking at a couple of projects," he said. "One of them will be focused on the coastal communities. Tsunamis are fairly rare, and in the Indian Ocean they are very rare. But many of the same kinds of systems that are needed to protect people and warn them about tsunamis also warn them in case of cyclones, storm surges, floods and other disasters.

He said the center would be working to provide technical training to coastal communities in the affected areas to help them assess their vulnerability to impending disasters.

Clark said the first thing he did after the Indian Ocean tsunami struck was to get two people on a plane and send them into the affected zone so they could report back directly on what was needed.

Within two weeks, Clark said, the center will have a total of six people on the scene.

Clark, whose work provides research support to emergency managers in the Indian and Pacific oceans, said his center has a series of long-term projects to assist in the rebuilding of devastated areas.

That effort has its pitfalls.

"With every disaster there are certain fundamental things that are never there. They always have to be recreated. And that always takes time," he said. "For example, from our perspective, one of the things we could use would be maps — simple maps so we could see where everything was that's now gone."

Instead, maps that could have been vital to the rescue operation were outdated and of little use.

Reach Will Hoover at 525-8038 or at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.