Report: Britain too slow after tsunami
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-24 14:49

British officials failed to do enough to help Britons caught up in the aftermath of last year's Asian tsunami, a government report said Thursday.

Emergency hotlines were overwhelmed, too few British medical workers reached affected areas quickly and officials misdirected a rapid response team, an investigation by the Foreign Office and the National Audit Office concluded.

The report praised diplomatic staff and others who worked long hours under severe pressure but said the government had many lessons to learn for future emergencies.

Only 36 operators were made available to deal with 11,000 calls an hour from Britons worried about loved ones in the tsunami-struck countries, the report said. Additional workers brought in to help didn't have enough relevant experience and made mistakes in taking down information, creating more work for police opening missing persons cases, it said.

A Foreign Office rapid response team was sent to Sri Lanka immediately after the wave hit, since initial reports had suggested wrongly that it was the worst hit country, the report said. Reinforcements from London didn't arrive in Thailand — where many Britons had been vacationing at beach resorts devastated in the disaster — until nearly two weeks later, the report said. Seventeen Britons died in Sri Lanka and 120 in Thailand. The total British toll was 140.

The tsunami killed or left missing more than 220,000 people in 11 Indian Ocean countries.