An Abbot man who left late last month to spend a month helping victims of the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami in Sumatra has found destruction beyond anything he could ever imagine.

“The smell of death was heavy in the air, and as far as the eye could see there were red and white Indonesian flags tied up on sticks marking bodies yet to be recovered,” Steve Maines, 61, recalled of his late January arrival in the city of Banda Aceh.

Maines, who has spent a lifetime traveling to developing countries as a photographer for CARE, UNICEF, the Christian Children’s Fund and other charities, felt he needed to offer the victims psychological support and an ear to listen to their traumatic experiences. He said last month that he would do whatever was necessary to help the devastated people.

In an e-mail to family and friends this week, Maines likened the region to a wasteland.

The 8 square miles of the city where he is staying is covered with 4 to 10 feet of debris. The devastation is just as bad for a 200-mile stretch of the northern coast and 400 miles down the west coast, he noted. There is everything imaginable in the rubble, such as pieces of houses, boats, cars, refrigerators, television sets, couches, dolls and huge trees.

All rice fields, trees and plants of any kind have been killed by the salt water, he wrote. None of the concrete buildings, including the big mall and many hotels, have been excavated, so bodies remain interred there, Maines said.

The 1,000 to 2,000 bodies being recovered each day in temperatures of 85 degrees Fahrenheit are placed in plastic bags and taken to mass graves, he said.

After one night spent in a church, Maines learned the next day that the tsunami had washed in six bodies and had deposited them where he had lain. He since has relocated to the Peace and Conflict Resolution Center of Aceh, a large, rather shabby house a few blocks from where the tsunami stopped in the downtown area.

Every relief group on the planet is helping the victims, as are military personnel from South Korea, Malaysia, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Japan and Germany, Maines wrote. There is almost no sign of the U.S. government or military, although the U.S. Mercy ship landed there this week “a month and a half late,” with well-trained doctors and state-of-the-art laboratories, he noted.

Maines, who has assisted the peer mentoring program in SAD 4 schools in the Guilford region and who is a substitute teacher in the local schools, has met several people who are there on their own as he is. He also has met people from Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore who are using their two-week vacations to provide relief to those affected by the tsunami.

“The people of Aceh Province have the most radiant, all-encompassing smiles,” Maines wrote. “They are very proud, but at the same time, extremely humble. They grieved heavily for the first few weeks, and have since somewhat accepted their losses as an act of God to teach them and the world about love.”

Maines said the children are open and friendly.

“It is a pure delight to be in their presence. I cry a lot, tears of joyful sadness,” he wrote. He said he had visited the children’s ward and the intensive care unit at the Banda Aceh hospital. Only 17 children are left there, he wrote, because all of the other children, victims of the tsunami, have either died or recovered and gone home.

“I still feel that physically being here and personally interacting with the people and listening to their stories is extremely important,” Maines wrote. “I just hope that more people can use what I am doing as an example and come here, dropping their ‘doing’ attitudes and just ‘be’ with these magnificent people.”