MENTAWAI ISLANDS, Indonesia — A group of private-aid workers battled fierce swells and driving rain that kept most craft on shore Friday, managing to deliver food and other supplies to desperate survivors on the islands hit hardest by a tsunami that killed more than 400 people.
Government agencies pulled back boats and helicopters that had been ferrying aid to the most distant corners of the Mentawai Islands and instead resorted to air-dropping boxes of aid from planes.
On a borrowed 75-foot cruiser, aid workers faced rough seas and rain — plus miserable seasickness — to bring noodles, sardines and sleeping mats to villages that have not received any help since Monday’s earthquake. In one village, most people were huddling in a church, too afraid to come down even to get the aid.
Dozens of injured survivors of the tsunami, meanwhile, languished at an overwhelmed hospital. The Associated Press
