Interview: Mark Pearson - 'It was like the aftermath of some terrible Armageddon'

Published on Friday 25 December 2009 19:26

FOR Scots charity worker Mark Pearson, the Boxing Day news of 2004 meant that Hogmanay would not be spent with friends and family. He watched as a tsunami, triggered by the second biggest earthquake in recorded history, devastated coastal communities across the Indian Ocean.

• Tsunami Aftermath. A fishing boat sit on top of a house that remains standing. Picture: Mark Pearson

Travelling thousands of miles, the billions of litres of water displaced by the quake slammed into 13 countries as far apart as Indonesia, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Somalia, in the single biggest natural disaster in recent history.

It took the lives of more than 230,000 people, left 1.9 million homeless and destitute and, in some cases, effectively destroyed whole communities.

Within four days of watching events unfold on television, Mark, 37, a photojournalist with international disaster relief charity ShelterBox, was in Sri Lanka attempting to come to terms with scale of the disaster.

"I saw a passenger train that had been thrown 100 metres from the tracks by the wave. I could see the Sri Lankan army cutting into the carriages to pull bodies out – it was a very intense experience," he says.

"There was a lot of looting, a lot of crime. People had been going into the railway carriages and taking rings and money from the bodies."

On the shores of Sumatra, directly facing the epicentre, the waves had reached heights of 65 feet, stripping vegetation from mountain sides half-a-mile inland, capsizing freighters and throwing boats into the trees.

The city of Banda Aceh the largest on Sumatra, just a few miles further round the coast from the epicentre, was almost completely destroyed, killing tens of thousands of people in less than 30 minutes.

It was here that Mark – who was born in Ayrshire and grew up in Stanraer – spent a month helping locals through ShelterBox and recording the effect of the tsunami.

ShelterBox specialises in emergency shelter provision; its name refers to large green boxes that it ships to disaster zones, containing all the basic necessities needed to support up to ten people.

Included is a ten-man tent, blankets, water purification and cooking equipment, basic tools, a stove and other items essential for a family to survive after they have lost everything. Each box costs 490 to fully equip – assuming six months' use, shelter and warmth are provided for less than 30p per person per day.

At Banda Aceh, Mark was confronted with the full horror of the tsunami.

"It was like the aftermath of some terrible Armageddon," he says. "Somewhere between 120,000 and 150,000 people were killed there. We saw a mass grave that was dug to hold 64,000 people. It was death on a scale that you cannot comprehend unless you saw it yourself. It was really hard to believe that anybody could have survived.

"I had a driver who had survived the thing. He said it started an earthquake lasting for 15 minutes, and the majority of the damage was done during then. Cars were bouncing around, rolling 360 degrees; buildings were coming down all over the place.

"He said that you couldn't stand or sit, the only thing you do was try to grab on to a palm tree and hang on. Finally, the quake subsided, but barely ten minutes later, the huge wave came hammering through. It carried debris miles inland."

The psychological impact of such a massive disaster on the local population saw survivors resorting to paying local witch doctors with what little money they had to help them find lost family members.

The landscape left behind was as bizarre as it was terrible: fishing boats were left beached on top of 30ft buildings, the army received calls for months after as locals discovered bodies that had been washed up miles from anywhere.

Even one of the few habitable hotels in the area had not escaped unscathed: "I had to crawl underneath the bow of a fishing boat to get into my hotel, and, even though I was staying on the third floor, the carpets were soaking from the flood waters."

Beset by aftershocks, even the simple act of travelling around the area was a challenge. Covered in a thick slick of mud and slime left by the retreating waters, the roads were impassable, even weeks after the disaster.

The relief effort was conducted using 100 United Nation helicopters, one of which carried Mark, who had bartered a place on board in exchange for a tent from one of the ShelterBoxes.

With the help of the Royal Navy, he used the boxes to set up one of the first tented cities to house refugees: "It was amazing the effect it had. You had 40 families subsisting under tarpaulins, so to give them the boxes and tents was to give them hope. It just made these people comfortable, gave them their privacy back."

Mark's stay in the area lasted five months in the aftermath of the disaster but, five years on, the shockwaves of the tsunami can still be felt.

The work of rebuilding the lives and communities continues, helped by what Oxfam has said was the largest international relief effort in its 67-year history. A total of 184 million was donated worldwide by individuals and governments, a fact that was hailed by the charity.

This week, it is using the fifth anniversary of the disaster to warn that increasing climate catastrophes could overwhelm the humanitarian aid system. The international relief agency is preparing to close the last few remaining projects that were set up to help tsunami victims.

Oxfam chief executive Barbara Stocking said: "The tsunami was an awesomely destructive event matched only by a truly monumental expression of public generosity and compassion. The disaster was on such a massive scale that it raised huge challenges to the aid world.

"As we close the final part of our response, we are leaving behind people and organisations in better shape.

"This was possible because for the first time we had the resources to stay there with communities long enough to help them rebuild their lives and leave a legacy that we can be proud of."

Mark adds: "Nothing could have been more powerful than the tsunami. This was the biggest disaster anyone of us will see in our lifetimes, but the picture that stands out for me personally is of the first ShelterBoxes arriving in Ulle, Sri Lanka, where a bridge had been destroyed by the tsunami. We had help from the Sri Lankan navy and the Canadian army who built a raft so we could transport the ShelterBoxes.

"It was good to know we were starting to deliver help to thousands of people who had been displaced by the devastation."

&#149 For more details, contact Shelterbox at www.shelterbox.org