LOCALS HELP RELIEF EFFORT.

Byline: Rachel Uranga Staff Writer

When local doctors arrived in Sri Lanka to help tsunami victims, they feared an orphanage some of them helped found in 2002 had been wiped out.

But a row of pine trees planted in front of the building saved it from the worst of the damage: all the children survived.

``It was the most amazing thing,'' said Dr. Larry Stock, an Antelope Valley Hospital emergency room physician who returned Sunday from a 10-day relief mission.

``Sometimes we don't understand nature. It made you respect how fragile we all are.''

While the orphanage - which housed 100 children in the northeastern Sri Lankan province of Tincomalee - remained standing, many buildings in the surrounding area were flattened. In the nearby town of Kinniya, the tsunami destroyed the seaside hospital and Ministry of Health building.

In all, the tidal waves killed more than 30,000 people in Sri Lanka.

By New Year's Day, six days after the tsunami, the Southern California doctors had turned a half-built library into an acute treatment center. In another six days, they opened a nine-bed emergency room and outpatient center.

The emergency room is treating 500 to 1,000 patients a day for health problems like respiratory illness, infected wounds and hepatitis.

The mission was pulled together by the San Luis Obispo nonprofit relief group VeAhavta, which is Hebrew for ``You Shall Love.'' Doctors recruited by the Santa Monica-based Global Health Access Program also helped.

VeAhavta has been operating in Sri Lanka for several years. Last fall, it set up five mobile medical centers, which are now being used to treat Sri Lankans left homeless from the tsunami.

``These folks were just amazing,'' mission leader Dr. Rushdie Abdul Cader said by telephone Monday from Sri Lanka. ``Sri Lankans are rebuilding the country rapidly. Now it's a question of how international aid is distributed.''

Meanwhile, more volunteers from around the San Fernando Valley are working in tsunami-ravaged regions.

Burbank-based Islamic Relief USA president Ahmad Elbendary, who is on a medical supply mission in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, said he will never be able to forget the devastation.

``It's beyond belief. It's just hard to see it,'' said Elbendary.

Elbendary saw rows of bodies, communities erased by the tidal waves and people wandering the streets dazed a full two weeks after the tsunami. More than 100,000 Indonesians died in the earthquake, tsunami and the aftermath.

``You can't imagine. There are whole places gone,'' said Elbendary, who oversaw the distribution of 160,000 pounds of medical supplies donated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ``It's not demolished, not destroyed, it's just gone.''

Rachel Uranga, [phone]

rachel.uranga(at)dailynews.com