From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

VITHYA BALASUBRAMANIAM

Tsunami relief worker

April 20 2005

This is the type of woman to have around in a crisis. In situations that make other people crumble, Vithya Balasubramaniam doesn't. A student at the University of Miami, the 20-year-old spent last Christmas break with 52 other college students in her family's homeland, Sri Lanka. On Dec. 26, as the coast was ravaged by killer waves that eventually claimed 220,000 lives in 11 countries on the Indian Ocean, Balasubramaniam and other student volunteers were visiting an orphanage in a war-torn area nine miles inland, clueless about the tsunami.

But that day, as they headed to the next orphanage, the volunteers saw the first sign of devastation. "When we saw that first tractor [pulling a cart full] of bodies, I just stared at it," Balasubramaniam recalls. "I didn't even know what to think. I didn't know if war had broken out. The girl next to me just passed out right in front of me, and the girl on the other side started vomiting."

Balasubramaniam just kept thinking about what she could do to help. The students were told to turn back because of a flood. Only later did they learn that it was a tsunami and that only about 15 of the 125 kids at the orphanage to which they were headed that day had survived. Early the next morning, the volunteers set out for hospitals and makeshift camps to distribute food, clothes, soap, towels and other necessities. At one school, survivors gathered in classrooms, still wearing the clothes in which they had nearly drowned the previous day.

People were hysterical. Those who could sleep took turns lying on the few mats available. At night, the only light in the school came from three small lanterns. "I was trying to talk to this woman, and she had, like, five children surrounding her," Balasubramaniam recalls. "I couldn't even see her face. I was just listening to her voice, and I was just thinking, 'How long do these people have to live in these conditions and try to watch five kids in a place with 15 families in pitch darkness?' "

Another woman swam against a current so strong it ripped her clothes off and took her baby. Survivors were taken in trucks to search for loved ones or to identify bodies. "It was really bad because every time they went, they would be hopeful," Balasubramaniam says. "And then, every time the truck came back, they would be screaming."

She recalls seeing six siblings "just sitting there looking at everybody else crying around them." She drew pictures in the sand for them and taught the kids clapping games. Another girl sobbed uncontrollably. She had lost both parents and was responsible for her four younger siblings. "She's 10," Balasubramaniam says. "I just sat there and held her for some time until she stopped crying."

Upon returning home Jan. 7, Balasubramaniam began soliciting donations for the tsunami's victims. She helped raise $800 at a car wash organized by her brother. She has spoken at a tsunami fundraiser and given several interviews with the media about her efforts. In addition to performing South Indian classical dance for nonprofit organizations and playing with sick children, she continues to raise awareness and money for the disaster's victims.

"I'm trying really hard to keep the awareness up and tell people that [donating] isn't just a one-time thing, that it's going to take years and years for these people to build back their homes," she says. "All they've got is their life. But they don't even have enough food to preserve that."

-- Colleen Dougher