World leaders have fallen into step with the remarkable outpouring of generosity from ordinary people as a huge increase in US Government relief pushed the global government fund for tsunami aid to $2.6billion.
A day after President George Bush increased the US pledge to $US350million ($448 million) the Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, announced his country would contribute up to $US500million. Aid from the Australian Government totals $60million, while individual and corporate donations have passed $64million to four agencies in seven days, making it the country's greatest relief effort.
That figure already exceeds all emergency fundraising last year and is expected to double as other organisations tally the money they have collected and more donations flow through.
The secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, said the world had responded generously to the largest disaster the UN had faced.
"In seven days we've got more money in response to the tsunami crisis than we did for all the humanitarian appeals we issued in 2004," he told US television.
"International compassion has never, ever been like this," said Jan Egeland, the UN's emergency relief co-ordinator, who is helping lead what looks to be the largest such effort in history.
Graham Tupper, the chief executive of the umbrella aid organisation the Australian Council of International Development, said Australian donors had been among the most generous in the world. "This is eclipsing anything we've seen before by a long way."
Agencies urged the public to give money rather than help in kind, with donations of food and clothing too expensive to transport and the region already inundated with health volunteers.
The Red Cross has received $30million in Australian donations and deployed 800 people in earthquake and tsunami relief around the Indian Ocean rim.
"We've had over a hundred years experience in disaster management, but we've never seen anything of this magnitude across so many countries," said Dale Cleaver, acting general secretary of the Australian Red Cross.
Australian money has helped victims in Thailand, Sri Lanka and India. Two hospitals in Aceh have received Red Cross medical supplies, and the first cargo plane from Oxfam arrived in the province yesterday, aiming to provide water supply systems for 60,000 survivors in refugee camps by tomorrow. Oxfam had received $7.6million in donations.
A team of experts from CARE Australia is due to arrive in Aceh today to direct early relief efforts.
A spokesman, Grant Thomas, said it was receiving about 160 telephone calls an hour and a similar number of internet donations, totalling $11.5million since Boxing Day.
The head of World Vision Australia, Tim Costello, who returned from Sri Lanka yesterday, said it would take a generation to rebuild affected nations.
"I saw things I wish I had never seen and I certainly wish no humans should ever, ever have suffered," he told radio 2GB.
The agency received $15.5million, including $72,000 from the Sydney Cricket Ground, yesterday.
The fundraising effort will be helped by tsunami relief cricket matches featuring an Asian eleven versus the rest of the world, the first in Melbourne next Monday.
The Governor-General, Michael Jeffery, will meet the nation's main non-government aid agencies tomorrow to be briefed on the tsunami disaster.
It was important to ensure specialist agencies were fully supported, he said.
Since this was written, I'm pretty sure Australia alone has donated $1 billion to Indonesia... which from what I know, is something we can't actually afford to do withing cutting some major costs elsewhere. Also, right now on TV they're running a television show on EVERY commercial station to try and get people to donate more money... I think it's gone over $4 million at this point. What I want to know, is do they need THIS much money? I read an article at TIMEasia that said the cost of damage in Thailand may reach $1 billion... it seems asthough the rest of the World is going to end up paying for everything and then some. Does anyone know how strong the economies are in the countries affected?
I'm not saying I think we've already donated enough, but I'm just curious to see what others think about it.
I heard it was a one off $1 billion donation to Indonesia.
