Gazette reporter HUGO TILNEY has travelled to Sri Lanka to find out how aid from Wiltshire is starting to help families in areas destroyed aby the tsunami to rebuild their lives and their homes.

From the outside there is little to tell that inside the ugly, grey concrete block on the edge of Colombo airport, lie the answers to the prayers of thousands of people for whom life has become a desperate struggle since the tsunami struck.

The only clue to the massive aid operation inside the building is the stream of lorries that arrive empty but leave full.

It is these lorries that are carrying the tents, food, and medical supplies to the estimated 950,000 homeless people in an attempt to restore some form of normality after the horror of the past month.

From the warehouse, which is part of the airport's extension and still under construction, more than seven million kilos of aid has been distributed since December 30.

The aid has arrived at Colombo airport, situated 35km north of the capital, in 295 planes, from 60 different countries. Each day more planes arrive and though they have reduced in numbers from the 20-odd at the beginning there are still six or seven flights coming in a day.

As I get off my passenger flight and am hit by the hot humid air of Sri Lanka I can immediately see aid, wrapped in cargo nets, being unloaded from other planes on the airfield. One of them is a Royal Air Force aircraft from RAF Brize Norton.

A poster by the arrivals gate reads 'We welcome the aid and relief groups arriving at Sri Lanka to assist us at this time of crisis. Thank you.'

Terminal superintendent on the day I arrive is DV Wimalaratna who works in the aid co-ordination centre. The centre has a staff of 50 people who work 24-hour shifts with two days off in between.

Mr Wimalaratna, like so many others, has lost relatives in the tsunami. His father-in-law and two sisters were killed in the southern town of Tangalle to the east of Galle. He has not been to Tangalle since the tsunami struck but knows they are dead because he has spoken to his relatives' neighbours who had seen their bodies.

"We are happy and we just keep going. All the people are working well together so we are happy," he says. His job is to ensure the day-to-day running of the airport and it is he who arranges a lift for me out to the central aid warehouse on the edge of the airfield.

Here the airport emergency team made up of UN representatives, Sri Lankan government officials and a workforce from the Sri Lankan air force is based and where all the aid is collected and distributed.

Once planes are unloaded the first job is to carefully record and log everything that is brought in, by whom, from where and when. It must then be passed by customs before the aid agencies for which it is consigned can take it away in the waiting lorries. If all goes well it can be a matter of hours before the aid is on the final leg of its journey.

When aid arrives that is not consigned to a particular aid agency the process becomes longer. The aid, depending on its content, is passed to either the health, foreign or social departments of the Sri Lankan government who then arrange the transport. How long this takes depends on the availability of transport but it could be two or three days.

Belgian Per-Arne Blank heads part of the UN team based at the airport. Like any operation on this scale there are frustrations and for Mr Blank paperwork is at the top of the list.

"We are becoming more and more organised every day but there is still lots that can be done.

"We are in the process of transferring all paper records on to computers which will help enormously but it is a lengthy process," he said.