Red Cross Blogs

5 years on: Twitter updates from Indonesia

By Jamie
December 14, 2009 at 3:39 pm

As Sarah wrote last week, this month marks the five year anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated 13 countries and destroyed millions of homes on Boxing Day 2004.

After the tsunami struck, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement mobilised thousands of staff and volunteers across Indonesia, the Maldives and Sri Lanka to carry out search and rescue, relief distribution and a range of health activities, from first aid to psychological support. In May 2009 the British Red Cross completed it’s recovery programme after building more than 2,600 new earthquake resistant homes and distrubuting over £4million in cash to survivors.

This month, we’ve launched an interactive game to show how money raised by the emergency appeal in 2004 was spent and give an idea of the difficult decisions involved in disaster management and recovery. As well as that, one of our press officers, Amanda George has flown out to Indonesia to get a first hand look at how the communities ravaged by the tsunami have rebuilt in the five years since it struck.

She touched down in Jakarta on Saturday and has already seen some amazing sights, heard moving stories from survivors, and travelled to the regions where Red Cross aid made such a difference to the communities at the centre of the disaster.

Although internet access is patchy, Mandy’s been able to keep in touch to describe the vist by Twitter, as well as sending photographs and blog posts when she can. You can follow the journey live by subscribing to the British Red Cross Twitter feed – below is a sample of Mandy’s updates straight from Aceh in northern Indonesia.

One of the strangest things Mandy’s seen so far is a 2,600 ton ship stranded 5km inland from the coast, washed ashore by the wave. She’s met some inspirational people and even had a close encounter with a 4 foot crocodile – all within a few days!

You can follow Mandy’s updates by signing up to Twitter (it only takes a minute and you don’t have to give out any personal information) and following @BritishRedCross. Mandy’s updates are all tagged ^MG.

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Tags: Indonesia, international delegate, tsunami

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Emergencies, Fundraising and events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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