Elephants help clear tsunami debris

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Up until now, Medang's life basically had been a series of circus tricks.

The 48-year-old bull elephant knew how to kick footballs and to put wreathes of flowers around people's necks. He could stand on his hind legs. He delighted children with his antics at a wildlife park in northern Sumatra.

But the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami ended this life of frivolity. Medang and five other Asiatic elephants have been enlisted to search for corpses and clean up wreckage. The elephants were pressed into service because of the initial lack of backhoes and tractors in this stricken city.

Even though heavy equipment has since arrived, thanks to an outpouring of support from the international community, the elephants have kept their new jobs. They are not so easily replaced by technology because the machines can't easily replicate the sure-footedness of the elephant's gait or the agility its long trunk.

"They're very good at this. The elephant's sense of smell is much better than a human's. Their trunk can get right into small spaces and lift the rubble," said Nazarruddin, an elephant handler who was leading one of the teams. Like many Indonesians, he goes by one name.

In Banda Aceh, the elephants have been working mainly in a residential neighborhood called Lantaman, within a mile of the shoreline. Houses in this area were gutted but not completely flattened, as happened at the beachfront. The elephants have to step over half-destroyed walls and sheets of mangled corrugated metal or walk gingerly across platforms of concrete, skills that are not so unlike their circus tricks.

On a rainy afternoon the elephants were excavating a partially collapsed house. It appeared to have been a rather nice house, judging from the appurtenances of middle-class life — a washing machine, a nice leather briefcase — that were strewn in the rubble.

Guided by his "mahout," or driver, Medang maneuvered his long, leathery trunk into a crevice in what appeared to have been a supporting wall. Then, the big head was lifted with the trunk wrapped around a 4-foot-long slab of concrete studded with metal reinforcing rods and squares of tile.

"Look at what this elephant can do! He's the strongest," boasted Zulkarnan, the "mahout," who was on top of the giant beast, his legs folded over the head and his feet tucked behind the ears.

"But Nonik is the smartest," interjected another elephant driver, Sufian, referring to the 35-year-old female elephant he was riding. He claimed that his elephant, "being female and still a virgin," was the most sensitive and careful of the pack, although she could lift only 2 tons to Medang's 3.