the tsunami files, part2

so after landing all the equipment and organising unloading of trucks/planes etc.. for a few days and having started building camps, these were more or less the scenes at the sites of the 12 camps ranging from past ahangama to seenigama, total 650 tents.
(hope i can align pics this time...)


cleaning the site
discussing location of lines and clusters of tents
organising the squads for rigging, picketing and covers (2 layers)









entertaining the rascals!










the truly excellent slaf boys in koggala! top guys really, they gave a big hand, can b proud of them. txs lieutenant bimal and cmdr madumage for organising your men so well!







myself, after an arsebreaking month..pissed and knackered!

we also put up a field hospital (including an operating theatre) , it was operational 2 days after tsunami, at the malwatte m.o.h clinic in unawatuna. the average number of patients treated wasw daily over 100 so by the time we dismantled it 3 months later we were closing in to 9000 cases treated. i must say after the first 3 wks people were coming because it was f.o.c. and were mostly complaining about flus, but nevertheless our 6 docs were always keen to help anyone. on the 31 st night we sortof had a new years dinner, many people cried, including some docs, it was very touching and noone will ever forget those moments. we had some very serious cases at the start, cuts, limbs missing, infections etc. my only trouble was crowd control, loads of people new me so wanted to jump the queue! and i had to explain, patiently, that it couldn't b done. no hard feelings tho, they understood...

some pics of the hospital.


one of the numerous field visits outside the hospital. health issues were developing in the refugee camps, bad water, bad food etc. so we organised camp visits.

patients waiting....