Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team finally rolled into Ampara, Sri Lanka, on Monday, bringing medical supplies, water-purification equipment and food to survivors of the Dec. 26 tsunami.

About 130 members of the military team got off a bus in the stricken village shortly before 8 p.m. local time, four days after leaving CFB Trenton.

Cpl. Warren Reid, from Nfld, buys drinks from a vendor during a break in travel as the DART team deploys in Sri Lanka, Monday. (CP photo)
Cpl. Warren Reid, from Nfld, buys drinks from a vendor during a break in travel as the DART team deploys in Sri Lanka, Monday. (CP photo)

DART's home base during the six-week deployment will be in an old sugar factory in Ampara, about 30 kilometres away from the worst-hit area.

An advance team of about 50 members had earlier arrived in the region to begin figuring out what DART's role will be as the region struggles to recover.




"There are a number of clinics that the local government wants us to help with," one team member told CBC. "We'll put our doctors right in those clinics."

Small units of the bigger DART team will form satellite teams and travel to towns and villages up to a day's drive from Ampara to set up auxiliary hospitals.

They will offer medical services to people who still haven't had their wounds treated after being tossed around in dirty, debris-choked sea water more than two weeks ago.

DART also has the capacity to produce 200,000 litres of clean water each day.

That will be a welcome commodity in a region where salt water has flooded into fresh water supplies and uncollected bodies of tsunami victims are still being found in rivers.

The soldiers will also offer themselves as sources of labour, to do whatever they can to start rebuilding destroyed structures in the community.