Up to 100 Irish aid workers are expected to travel to South Asia to help the relief effort in the coming weeks.
Two Trócaire workers, Ms Deirdre Ní Cheallaigh from Donegal and Ms Vicky Tindal from Dublin arrived in Sri Lanka on Sunday to support Trócaire's partner, Caritas, in its emergency response. Ms Ní Cheallaigh, emergency programme officer, said they were assessing the situation today and would decide where aid and resources should be targeted. She said the monsoon season had compounded the problems in the north and north- east of Sri Lanka as some areas were under four and five feet of water.
Aid workers would be trying to provide temporary shelter as many of the 800 camps were in schools and would have to be moved, she said.
Ms Ní Cheallaigh said the government wanted children to return to school as quickly as possible so that some form of normality could return.
"There are white flags everywhere you go - they are the Buddhist symbol of death - and people are very subdued," she said. Sri Lankans who had not been affected by the disaster had been extremely generous, Ms Ní Cheallaigh said.
A third Trócaire worker, Ms Anne Holmes from Drogheda is travelling to Indonesia this week to work in Aceh where up to 100,000 people were reported dead.
Concern had an advantage over some other agencies as it already had staff in India when the tidal wave struck. An emergency team arrived in Tamil Nadu the day after the tsunami, said Mr Rod MacLeod, Concern's country director in India.
He arrived four days ago and said progress was slowly being made. Basic food and non-food items such as polythene sheets were being distributed. He said it was a surreal situation, as coastal areas had been completely devastated, while inland areas were untouched and crops still grew in the fields. "It's hard to describe it."
Mr John O'Shea, GOAL chief executive said more than 30 GOAL workers were currently working alongside local staff and partner organisations and this would double in the coming weeks. In India, GOAL is working in 75 villages in Tamil Nadu.
Of the 187 villagers lost in one district, some 107 were children. "The children playing on the beach when the tsunami struck were the ones who bore the brunt of it," said Dr Kali Prasad Pappu, who is working with the aid organisation.
