BEIJING - ASIAN countries with natural disaster experiences are offering aid, personnel and money as part of the massive international effort to help quake-devastated Haiti.
The island nation's situation is all too familiar to Indonesia: a mammoth quake struck off the country's western coast in 2004, spawning a tsunami that killed about 230,000 people in 14 countries - half of them in Indonesia.
'As a country that has itself been devastated by a similar situation, we are absolutely saddened by what's happening in Haiti,' Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said at a meeting of Asean nations in Vietnam. Jakarta will be sending a 75-man medical and rescue team to Haiti.
A Chinese plane carrying 10 tonnes of tents, food, medical equipment and sniffer dogs arrived in Haiti yesterday. Accompanying the emergency materials was a 60-member earthquake relief team with first-hand experience in the country's own quake disaster two years ago.
The world had sped to China's aid during its May 2008 quake, which had rumbled across a huge swathe of its south-west, leaving almost 90,000 people dead or missing.
'Most of the members are very experienced,' Mr Liu Xiangyang, deputy chief of the National Earthquake Disaster Emergency Rescue Team, said.
Read the full story in Friday's edition of The Straits Times.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
