Searchers face grim job in Sri Lanka

MULLATIVU, Sri Lanka — They spread out across the landscape of destroyed buildings, twisted wire, fishing nets and tree limbs yesterday like ants, sporting pink gloves and surgical masks. In bands of twos and threes they searched, poking with sticks, prodding, kicking at stones and looking behind trees.

The 150 or so young men, each earning $1 to $2 a day, are searching for bodies, something they've been doing all week. The grim reality is that noses are as important as eyes for this job, given that the bodies have been lying in the tropical heat for five days.

The searchers have found most of the bodies in the main part of this flattened beach town, although a few animal remains can be seen here and there, including the body of a dog near what used to be a Catholic church. The dog appears asleep in the sand until it becomes apparent that rigor mortis has frozen one of its legs at an unnatural angle above the ground.

But those can wait. The main focus is an area just to the south of the main part of Mullativu marked by muddy marshland and scrubby low palms. Not only is it relatively inaccessible, it is becoming a receptacle for much of the tsunami's castoffs.

As Sunday's deadly wave landed on Sri Lanka's east coast, it surged deep into this low-lying area until it wore itself out here half a mile inland.

Mullativu, 180 miles northeast of Colombo, is part of Tamil Tiger-controlled northeastern Sri Lanka, which functions as an independent state with its own administration, police and courts beyond the reach of the capital. The coastal town was the location of an intense battle in 1996 in which more than 1,000 government soldiers were killed by rebels.

Because of the region's relative isolation and separate administration, there has been less outside attention given to the death and destruction caused by the tsunami here than elsewhere on the island, despite the high casualty rates and huge destruction.

As the water retreated after its deadly surge, it relinquished hints of the lives it destroyed: a red suitcase, a beach chair, a fishing lure, a little girl's party dress, along with the remains of their owners.

"Body, body," comes the crackle over Siva Kumar's radio.

"We are very busy," the 30-year-old worker says. "The smell is very bad."

After hearing the location, he races along a dirt road and down a small lane. Reaching a clearing, he heads a few hundred feet into the dense underbrush to where a couple of dozen workers, most wearing nothing more on their feet than flip-flops, have collected.

From another direction comes a backhoe, and a farm tractor pulls up hauling a load of firewood.

Tangled in a particularly dense thicket, near a briefcase with partly dissolved family snapshots, are the body of a woman, a child beside her who looks to be about 8, two other children and another adult.

Children and the elderly have made up a disproportionate number of the dead, experts say, because they are generally not strong swimmers.

The backhoe maneuvers through the dense palms. Several workers hanging off the cab in all directions kibitz with the driver on how best to maneuver among the obstacles and into position.

After several attempts with the machine's jerky arm, the driver eventually gets the shovel under the remains of the woman.

The body of one of the children, dressed in a striped T-shirt, appears to have already settled into its muddy grave. Eventually, however, one of the men, wearing pink rubber kitchen gloves, guides the child's arm and part of its torso back into the scoop of the backhoe with a stick, its hand the last thing to disappear in a gesture vaguely reminiscent of a parting appeal.

It takes the backhoe driver about five minutes to coax all of the bodies onto a small embankment. He then moves off to the next site.

Kumar and his team helped dispose of about 100 bodies Wednesday; he can't remember exactly how many. They found 34 Thursday and 22 as of midday yesterday.

Overall, there may be a couple of thousand bodies in the immediate area, too many to worry much about niceties, he said, and too little time left to counter the threat of disease.

There's little thought of reuniting them with loved ones, identifying them or even moving them beyond the bare minimum, given the lack of refrigeration and inadequate mortuary facilities.

In the end, everyone receives the same treatment. The remains of well-heeled vacationers and impoverished peasants, happy children and grumpy old men are viewed less as the tragic last vestige of a once-vibrant life than a potential breeder of disease.

With the bodies now in two clumps, one of the men moves in with a commercial sprayer and releases a fine mist of black disinfectant. A couple of dozen men who've been watching the operation from the sidelines now kick into gear, dragging the logs from the tractor and piling them on top of the bodies until they've created a 5-foot asymmetrical pyramid.

Several more men now appear and pour blue kerosene over the pile, their contribution to this well-oiled division of labor.

In a small nod to their human spirits, one of the workers tries to sprinkle rice atop the pile in something of a production-line blessing.

Another man lights a match to the chemical-soaked wood and the blaze roars to life, its petroleum-fueled smoke joining dozens of other fires on the horizon.

As the crew wraps up, Kumar's radio crackles again.

"Body, body," a voice rings out. "Another one here."

The group splits up. At one site, there are two babies about 30 feet apart. At the other, a mother and child are in each other's arms.

"It's very sad," Kumar says. "OK, we must go."