In Sri Lanka, a Hard Lesson On Road of Good Intentions

"They are doing good work," said Sundararajah, 54. "That's why I joined them."

Area of Devastation

Flanked by the ocean and a lagoon, shaded by graceful, curving coconut palms, Komari is a place of captivating beauty that occupies a narrow strip of sandy soil about 130 miles east of Colombo, the capital.

Even before the tsunami, it was also a place of considerable poverty. In contrast to the other side of this island nation, which in recent decades has experienced a boom in tourism and other industries, the east coast has borne the brunt of the suffering during the 20-year civil war between Sri Lankan government forces and rebels from the country's ethnic Tamil minority.

The death toll from the tsunami in Komari was far lower than it might have been. The catastrophe killed about 31,000 people nationwide. In this town, only an estimated 75 of 3,500 residents died, thanks in part to the quick thinking of paramilitary troops who evacuated the village before it was completely flooded. But the physical damage here was staggering, with most structures reduced to heaps of bricks or perhaps a single room or wall.

As elsewhere in Sri Lanka, international aid organizations rushed to provide food and other assistance to displaced families, most of whom still live in two large refugee camps that bracket Komari. But in what remains of the village, much of the recovery work has been carried out by the small team of freelancers that Byock recently left.

The team owes its existence to Darrin Coldiron, 35, a brash, stocky firefighter from Spokane, Wash., who flew to Sri Lanka with a colleague in early January. Other members included Lean, the nurse, and Andy Ashton, a primary school teacher, who were living together in Darwin. They initially tried to volunteer with established aid groups; finding no takers, they quit their jobs anyway, flew to Sri Lanka at their own expense and came to Komari.

Defining a Mission

Byock had experienced a similar awakening. After graduating from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore., in 2004, she drifted from place to place. She was staying with her grandmother in San Diego, and "99 percent of the way through 'Anna Karenina,' " the classic Leo Tolstoy novel, when the tsunami struck.

She hooked up with a tsunami relief group in her home town of Missoula, helped raise money and learned about Komari from her local newspaper. An aunt bought her a plane ticket to Colombo, where she landed on Feb. 19.

The money Byock brought with her from Missoula, along with funds raised elsewhere, swelled the team's coffers to about $40,000. The group acquired a name, Northwest Firefighter Disaster Recovery, and a purpose. With larger organizations devoting most of their resources to semi-permanent housing and sanitation in the camps, the team decided to focus its energies on the village.

To that end, they tried to set an example by moving into a grubby, tile-roofed bungalow that is one of Komari's few intact dwellings. Thrown together like contestants on "Survivor," they shared the hardships of hauling water from a well and showering under a plastic container warmed by the sun.

As a first step toward making the village habitable, the volunteers began an effort to clean wells that had been flooded with seawater, acquiring pumps and a $450 salinity tester and consulting foreign experts by phone and e-mail. Hiring local workers for $5 a day, they also went to work on the school, knocking down classroom buildings that Coldiron deemed unsafe and fixing others.

The volunteers have encountered many unforeseen roadblocks. In particular, they have clashed with local officials over the interpretation of a new rule meant to discourage people from living within about 200 yards of the sea, a policy that has effectively placed much of Komari off-limits to rebuilding. They have also had problems with workers from professional aid agencies.