By Mary Beth Sheridan and Josh Partlow
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 28, 2004; Page B01

When he first heard about the deadly tsunami in his homeland, Rizwan Mowlana called Sri Lanka but couldn't get through. Finally, the phone at his Gaithersburg home started jingling yesterday with news of his relatives.

A cousin and his family, including a 3-month-old child, were playing on the beach. Gone.

An aunt and her children were on a train to the coast. Gone.

A cousin was at the Sunday market with her husband and son. Gone.

"Still the stories are coming in," said Mowlana, adding that he lost at least 30 relatives in the disaster. "It's horrible."

Across the Washington area, immigrants from several countries were plunged into grief and panic by the news of the tsunami. Many frantically dialed relatives and desperately watched television footage from the area.

Even though some did not know the fate of loved ones, they quickly began making plans to help the victims.

"My neighbors and everyone have been calling me, saying, 'What can we do?' " said Mowlana, who is executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations office in Maryland. "I said, 'Okay, we'll set up a 40-foot container, gather food and clothes and toys for the children. That's what they need to start the healing process.' "

Then he set up a temporary warehouse: his garage.

The tragedy touched a variety of immigrants in the Washington area: Sri Lankans, Thais, Indians, Indonesians. Although several of those communities are small, they threw themselves into relief efforts.

The Sri Lanka Association of Washington D.C. quickly set up an emergency fund to receive donations. By yesterday, it had sent $3,000 to an agency coordinating assistance in Sri Lanka, said the group's president, Nihal Goonewardene. The association, which has about 250 members, hopes to raise $20,000 to $25,000, he said.

"Every home connected to Sri Lanka has been affected," Goonewardene said.

Irawan Nugroho, who heads the local Indonesian Community Association, said the group decided to turn its New Year's Eve party at the Fortune restaurant in Falls Church into a fundraising event.

"We're going to change the tone, into a night for humanitarian relief," said Nugroho, an employee of Voice of America.

At the College Park offices of the Association for India's Development, volunteers made signs and fliers to raise awareness about the dire need along the coast of southeastern India, where a towering wall of water wreaked havoc. By yesterday afternoon, the group had raised $44,504 through its Web site, said Priya Ranjan, a coordinator of the relief effort.

"It's a terrible disaster, and the people who have been worst hit are mostly poorer people. Slums have been completely washed out," said Ranjan, one of about 500 volunteers who work with the nonprofit organization in the United States. Indians are one of the largest immigrant groups in the Washington area, with a population of about 46,000, according to the 2000 Census.

Even as he grieved, Mowlana threw himself into the fundraising effort, too. He quickly drew up plans for a new charity called Asia Relief. By yesterday afternoon, he had booked a Web site and met with lawyers to draw up papers for the organization.

In the short term, he hoped to send aid to victims of the disaster. But he was already thinking about longer-term projects -- specifically, helping to set up an early-warning system for coastal dwellers. Last weekend's tsunami slammed into the worst-affected countries about two hours after they were triggered by a massive underwater earthquake.

"Two hours, in today's terms, is a lifetime," Mowlana said. "But nobody knew."

Although many families received word yesterday about their loved ones, others were enduring an agonizing wait. Communications were still out in some areas hit hard by the tsunami, and it was unclear whether some people in devastated towns had managed to escape.

Sahaschai Musikabhumma, a Thai immigrant in Baltimore, said his daughter was supposed to be in the Thai islands on vacation, but he wasn't sure where she was.

"I tried to call my brother to find information, but nobody has heard anything so far," he said.

At the International Buddhist Center in Silver Spring, monks tried to console immigrants worried about their families.

"Some people here are trying to call Sri Lanka. They can't get the real details" about relatives, said chief monk Bhante Uparatanda. The problem was that no one knew what had happened to many of the people in the worst-hit areas, he said.

"A whole family is gone, and there are no witnesses," he said.

Staff writer Debbi Wilgoren and staff researcher Carmen Chapin contributed to this report.