Much tsunami clothing aid 'wasted'

Much aid ended up in warehouses, the Red Cross said.

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LONDON, England -- Large amounts of clothing donated for victims of the December 26 tsunami went to waste because of poor communication, according to a report by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

The disaster highlighted how despite a huge international response, duplication of effort and competition caused a chaotic relief effort, the report released on Wednesday said.

"When a big disaster strikes, chaos is almost automatically what follows," Matthias Schmale, international director of the British Red Cross, told The Associated Press.

"World Disasters Report 2005" is a collection of essays by experts, commissioned and published by the charity.

The Red Cross said aid agencies must communicate clearly to donors and the public what they do and do not need.

In the tsunami response and others, unsolicited aid clogged up the relief supply line and caused problems, it added.

Relief agencies should in future make joint assessments to avoid such duplication, said Alastair Burnett, a senior official from the Asia office of the British Red Cross.

International donors raised more than $11 billion for tsunami relief in the nine months since it struck the Indian Ocean region, the United Nations' emergency coordinator said.

More than 226,000 people were listed as dead or missing, while 1.7 million were displaced and more than 500,000 lost their homes.

Much used clothing was either dumped in warehouses or by roadsides because it failed to meet survivors' needs, the British Red Cross said.

"People sometimes give tatty, worn out clothing. There are issues of the dignity of the people we serve," Burnett told AP.

The charity also urged the creation of early warning systems to prevent the kind of massive death tolls the tsunami created.

Juan Manuel Suárez del Toro, President of the International Federation, said: "Early warning is the most obvious way that information can help save lives.

"In the Caribbean, during the 2004 hurricane season, most countries in the region successfully alerted their populations of approaching storms and many lives were thus saved. The key to this success was putting people, and not only technology, at the centre of warning systems."