Utahns await word on teen

Family members of a Salt Lake teenager missing in the aftermath of southeast Asia's devastating tsunami continued to wait for news late Thursday as the region's death toll maintained its dramatic growth.

Skyline High School sophomore Kali Breisch has been missing in Thailand since the tsunami hit the day after Christmas. Her father, Stuart Breisch, has been combing the beaches and searching sites where unidentified bodies lie by the hundreds, hoping to find a sign of what has happened to his daughter, family friend Charlene Edmunds said.

Breisch, 15, was swept away from a beachside bungalow in the resort area of Phuket, Thailand, and has been missing since.

As the search for Kali continued, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was working to help survivors.

Garry Flake, director of emergency response for the church, has been in Southeast Asia since Monday, helping assess needs.

It may be one of the largest humanitarian relief efforts the church has ever participated in, said Flake — and perhaps one of the most difficult.

"It's been a real issue to try to get your hands around and coordinate," said Flake, who was in Colombo, Sri Lanka, early Thursday. "Each day I've been here, the number of mortalities have gone up. As that has gone up, the number of homeless have gone up."

During a 15-minute telephone report to LDS Church headquarters, Flake described the devastation and the immediate efforts of the church to assist victims of the tsunami.

"We were astonished by the force of the water," he said. "We just couldn't believe seeing the walls that have been caved down, homes that came down, people sitting along the side of the road where their homes were — literally thousands upon thousands have been displaced."

In Indonesia and Thailand, the church has been asked to provide body bags. Cash donations have been made to government agencies overseeing relief efforts in devastated countries. On Saturday, members of the LDS Church in Hong Kong will oversee an effort to assemble 30,000 hygiene kits.

"It's moving now from a phase where they're counting the dead, determining who's alive and trying to get families back together, to where they're needing basic food and medical supplies, plastic sheeting and hygiene kits — the items that people need just to simply keep on going day to day," said Flake.