The Foreign Service Journal, April 2005

observing heaps of corpses covering about half of the main hospital floor. Many trucks filled with the dead arrived at the hospital every few minutes for unloading. After surveying the damage to the coastal area around Koggala Beach, the team attempted to proceed to the Matara area to make contact with other Americans. Unfortunately, the coastal roads were covered with debris and nearly impassable, and by this point, the government had declared a curfew. The group thus returned to Colombo at around 11 p.m. on Dec. 27. Over the next several weeks, until the middle of January, consular teams repeatedly visited Galle, Matara, Yala, Arugam Bay and Trincomalee to track down missing Americans. The consular section issued 26 no-fee passports during this time. We also cancelled all visa processing for three weeks to tackle the task of trying to take care of the needs of our fellow citizens, updating the embassy’s Web site to advise the American and Sri Lankan communities about the change to our services. Consular officers repeatedly visited morgues and hospitals to assist American citizens and to coordinate the provision of services. Complicating the task further, some of the bodies were unrecognizable because of severe decomposition. The consular section in Colombo has only three Americans and six FSNs, who generally worked 12-14 hours per day, trying to keep up with the deluge of inquiries, both from American citizens outside the coun- try and from the task force back in Washington. Other embassies and the department generously offered TDY support, which we gratefully accepted. Fortunately, our embassy really came together during this time. Our administrative section gave us able support in many areas, particularly with travel arrangements. The Community Liaison Office and the Medical Unit did a superb job in helping our compatriots cope with their physical and mental trauma. Members of the embassy community opened up their homes to the victims during this disaster, provided free meals, and donated clothes and money to the victims of the tsunami. Several volunteers helped the consular section to field calls, while others consoled the victims of the disaster. The volunteers from the local American community were also wonderful. Some of our FSNs had experienced personal tragedy on a staggering scale, yet worked ceaselessly through the crisis. One employee was stranded near Batticoloa for a few weeks because a bridge had washed out. Challenging as the aftermath of the tsunami was for the embassy, it could have been much worse. Just seven Americans died in the disaster, while Sri Lanka lost 30,000 people — about a third of whom were children. And it will be a long time before life returns to anything approaching normal here, or in many other parts of the region. Consular Section Embassy Colombo A Team Effort in Thailand Embassy Bangkok staff began working around the clock as soon as we learned of the disaster. The American Citizen Services Unit remained open 24/7 for almost three weeks and fielded thousands of calls from concerned friends and family members back in the U.S. who were looking for loved ones in Thailand. Assisted by a small but dedicated army of volunteers and TDY staff, we repeatedly called and e-mailed back to confirm whether their loved ones had been in touch. The great majority of them had, but sadly, this was not true in every case: 10 American citizens have been confirmed dead in the disaster, and another 14 are presumed dead, but their remains have not yet been located or identified. While the United States was spared the horrifically high number of casualties suffered by countries such as Sweden, the stories of our dead are no less random or tragic. One of our first deaths was a mother of two who was struck in the head by the boat her family was climbing out of as the wave hit. A father wept as he recounted how his young daughter was ripped from his arms by the wave. The Italian friend of a young American woman told me she had already found and identified two other friends before finally locating the body of her American friend. The sister of another victim sobbed as she told me her brother’s story. She had come to Thailand after the tsunami in the hope of finding her broth- er, who was staying on Phi Phi Island. His remains have still not been found. Making the initial calls to the families of the American victims was even more difficult. How does one tell a family that we can confirm that their husband or father is dead because the body was found and identified by friends or officials, yet the remains have somehow gotten lost in the mayhem wrought by the tsunami? We have two such cases. A family of five was vacationing in the disaster area and had split up before the wave. The father, mother and one daughter were in one area and the son and a second daugh- ter in another. The son was seriously injured in the wave and the sister he was with was missing. I spoke to the son in the hospital shortly after the tsunami, and when the father later called the embassy, I was able to tell him that his son was OK, but that, unfortunately, there was no word about his young daughter. When the mother arrived in Bangkok (the father and older daughter were still searching for the missing child), she was met by Erin Sawyer, a consular officer assigned to Vientiane who was assisting Americans arriving at Bangkok’s airport. (See “Proud to Be an FSO,” p. 50.) The mother told A P R I L 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 47