Jesuit aid agency ships body bags with tsunami aid -- just in case

Published: 2005-01-25

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (CNS) -- Boxes of body bags were among the provisions field workers with Jesuit Refugee Service loaded on a truck to be shipped to a small island off Banda Aceh. The bags were there "just in case" their workers encountered the dead, said Philip Yusenda, project director for JRS in Aceh province. JRS was one of the first humanitarian aid organizations to respond to the tsunami disaster that killed up to 230,000 people in 12 Indian Ocean countries. Thirty minutes after the disaster, JRS workers on motorbikes were combing Banda Aceh's streets, looking to transport the injured to a medical clinic across the street from the agency's office. JRS had three staff members in Banda Aceh at the time. The house from which they worked was lightly damaged by the magnitude 9 earthquake; the waters caused by the tsunamis never reached the part of the city where the house is located.

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