Too close to have any chance at all

Rescuers in India's Andaman and Nicobar isles are struggling to assess the tsunami toll in areas untouched by the modern world.

Their biggest problem is reaching isolated villages on the remote islands, some home to fierce, stone age tribal people.

The area close to the epicentre of the great earthquake that spawned the tsunami is one of the most remote places in the world. Nobody knows how many died there, or whether there are survivors in desperate need of assistance.

On Car Nicobar, the worst affected island anybody knows about, half the population is missing. That is 10,000 people unaccounted for, on one island alone. But many of them may not be dead. Thousands fled deep into the jungle to escape the tsunami, and are still too afraid to come out.

Even on the islands that teams have been able to reach, the interiors are such dense jungle that it is impossible to get a complete picture. Helicopters are constantly flying over the islands, trying to spot groups of survivors so relief can be sent to them.

The Andamans and Nicobars are an archipelago of some 572 islands, most uninhabited. You can reach Port Blair, the administrative capital, easily enough, though the runway is damaged and the pilot has to slam the brakes on hard when you land. But most of the rest of the inhabited islands are usually only accessible by boat.

Officials thought there were no survivors at all on Kathcha island, but many of the missing from there have turned up alive on a neighbouring island. Nobody knows how they got there.

On Kharta, there are 571 missing, but only eight bodies have been found.

The one thing that is clear is the devastating effect of the tsunami. One island, Trinkat, has effectively been broken in two. Low-lying ground in the middle of the island is completely submerged, splitting Trinkat into two separate islands.

Survivors from Car Nicobar spoke of entire villages wiped out of existence by the tsunami, leaving not a trace when the waters receded.

The island was so close to the epicentre of the earthquake that there was no delay between the quake and the tsunami, such as survivors described in Sri Lanka or the south Indian mainland. The wave arrived almost immediately after the ground stopped shaking.

Caspar James is one of the survivors. Yesterday he told the extraordinary story of Car Nicobar from a secondary school in Port Blair where refugees have been given shelter.

"Around 6.30am suddenly there was an earthquake," he said. "And it was continuous, the earth was shaking for two or three minutes. We ran out of the house into the fields.

"The earthquake subsided, and three minutes after that a huge wave came from the sea. I didn't see the wave but I heard the sound. It was a tremendous sound, horrifying.

"Most of the people didn't know about the danger of the tsunami, but I was a geography student and I knew the danger. As soon as I heard that sound I told my family, 'Get up into the hills.' When we got up there, we saw the wave. It was 20 feet [6m] high. There was so much floating in it, entire trees. We thought the island was going to sink.

"There is nothing left of my house now. It wasn't a shack, it was a proper concrete house. There were 2500 people in Malacca, our village. The whole village is gone, there is not a single thing left.

"There is a bad smell from the village now, a terrible smell of dead bodies. People who arrived today told us the ground is still shaking in Car Nicobar."

Car Nicobar was a tropical paradise, all but untouched by the modern world. Now, like the islands around it, it lies in ruins. The very qualities that made it so beloved by its people, its remoteness, made it vulnerable.

- REUTERS, INDEPENDENT