Hello everyone. This is just a brief update to you keep you posted on our latest findings, as well as the status of our relief mission. We should have much more detailed information and photos soon, as Scuzz, the Californian crew, and the rest of our aid workers set foot on some of the devastated regions of northern Sumatra.

As you can see from the photos on this update, we stocked every available nook and cranny of the Southern Cross with relief supplies to take on it’s way up through the Telos, Hinakos, Nias, the Banyaks, and Simeulue. This wouldn’t have been possible without the cooperation of the Californian guests who were originally scheduled for just a normal surf trip. Mike Stenkilsson, Darren Stiles, Kevin McCarthy, David Lewis, Matt Stevens, Jeff Sivas, Matt Carrillo, and Bowen Ota all need to be thanked for not only sacrificing a great deal of comfort and elbow room on this journey, but also for agreeing to spend part of their surf trip helping those in desperate need of aid in this region. They are bringing as much essential survival material that they can fit, such as rice, noodles, fresh fruit and veggies, water, kerosene, and basic supplies for eating and digging. This trip will serve as a major surveying project so that the trips to follow can carry more specific products, and more of them, to the proper places.

The recent tragedy has also inspired one of our long-time return customers to make a special trip out to help those in need. Luis Renato Brand (a.k.a. “Mano”) is a surgeon from Curitiba, Brazil who usually comes out at least once a year to spend several weeks surfing with us. However this year Mano began a university job and was finding it impossible to come over with his new schedule. But after this most recent catastrophe, the pull to help was too great: “My mind tells me to come and leave all my jobs here and stay in indo as much it is needed.” This webmaster can tell you from personal experience that Mano does AMAZING work. I fell forward on a shallow reef up north, cutting my right hand badly. I didn’t even want to look at it at the time, but today I have trouble finding any evidence I was every even cut. Luis’ skills will be an extraordinary asset to the relief effort, but equally important is his positive and heartwarming personality. He puts everyone’s mind at ease and has a great way of relating to all cultures, and that’s exactly the type of people we need to make this relief effort successful.

The help cannot come soon enough, as the news continues to be heartbreaking. Word just came in from Scuzz just before he left that an Australian Aid helicopter had crashed in Teluk Dalam. We’ll give you more information on this as it develops, but preliminary information from Scuzz is that 9 of the 14 passengers have perished in this crash. Our hearts go out to the family members of those who lost their lives while unselfishly trying to help others.

We have also received further word from Dr. Kerry Sieh, our geologist friend from Caltech. He said the earthquake on March 26th appears to have been caused by a 3 – 10 meter slip on the megathrust under southern Simeulue to southern Nias, with the biggest patch of slip between Nias and Simeulue, west of the Banyaks. Members of Kerry’s crew will be heading out to the Mentawais and Batus this week to download their GPS units and send the data back to Caltech ASAP to see if anything strange has happened there. They have already received information from their stations in Bulasat, Tello, Singabang, and Sikaui, which should be processed within the next two days. This information should be very telling, and it should also give them a good idea whether or not anything fishy happened in the Mentawais or Batus.

Kerry himself will be back in Sumatra from mid-May through early-June to continue documenting what happened. In the meantime, he has asked Scuzz to check on the small island of Memong, which lies a few hundred meters north of the equator. Kerry says the land rises to about 4 meters above sea level at the highest point, with much of the island rising only to about 2 meters. He feels that even if a much smaller tsunami hit that didn’t register on the radar, even one of only 3 meters, they may have lost everything. There are about 20 wooden houses in the village Kerry befriended, so our thoughts are with the villagers of this small island.

As we said at the end of our last update, we hope to have more positive stories to report soon. But as of now, things are still very, very heavy. Please send you best wishes and positive vibes to the citizens of this area, as they will surely need it. And if you want to make a contribution to our relief effort, there is information on how to do so here.

Terima kasih – Slayer the web dork.