Cork family doing their bit
The refugee camp in Galle is now home to 30,000 people, yet is nothing more than encampments of plastic sheeting structures which provide flimsy protection against the flash floods in the area.
The camp was hurriedly built last week by about 30 British estate agents who, until the tsunami hit, were making a lucrative living from a property boom.
Now they are focusing their management skills on giving shelter to the tens of thousands of locals who are grieving loved ones.
Up to 4,000 people are believed dead in Galle alone. According to the United Nations, Sri Lankans could spend the next 10 years trying to recover from the disaster.
"I haven't stopped since I got home. We were the lucky ones. We had such a lucky escape but they have nothing. They don't have food, nappies, bed clothes and morale needs to be kept up. The government don't have the structures in place to help with the crisis and these people have just taken over," said Majella Tarbatt from Blackrock in Cork.
"Aid is coming through to the main centres but it's not getting through to the outlying areas fast enough. We're trying to get cash over to our friends in Galle as soon as we can so they can buy provisions."
It costs about €2,000 to send a truck from the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo to the Galle camp and Majella is hoping to send at least three truck loads in the coming days.
She and her husband Mark, their two young children and Majella's parents were sitting in the courtyard of their idyllic beachside guest house on Unawanatuna beach when they first spotted a wall of water gathering pace in the bay.
Every other morning of their holiday, they would have been lounging on the beach at this time but on St Stephen's Day, breakfast was late as bread hadn't been delivered.
"Furniture started moving in the villa and my wife just yelled for us to go upstairs. Thankfully, we were in a three storey villa so we raced up to the next floor," Mark said.
Waves of 10-12 foot swept over the house before the tsunami swept back out to sea, "sucking the bay dry", according to Mark.
"There are a lot of Irish and British people in Sri Lanka who are trying to do so much at the moment. I'm back home and all I can do is to keep on trying to send the money over. I had a very lucky escape and it's the least I can do," said Majella.
Majella can be contacted on 021-4295826.
