Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team has arrived at the old sugar factory outside Ampara that will serve as its main base.

But they are deploying in an area that appears to have generous supplies of food, clean water and medical care, said CTV's Lisa LaFlamme on Monday.

Dr. Robert Greaves and his wife Rhonda, a nurse, have been in the area for 13 days.

"Rebuilding is the issue," Robert told CTV News. "We brought with us $600 worth of fresh-water pumps and another $200 to $300 worth of tablets to make water and I'm taking every single one of them back."

Rhonda said instead of healing the sick, they were rediagnosing the already ailing.

"They would have medical notebooks with all of their medical history," she said. "It was all washed to sea, all written down."

LaFlamme said if the immediate needs are met, DART is prepared to alter its mission.

"We can assist with pumping out wells, chlorinating them and letting the water table fill them back up," said Maj. Steve Hewitt of the DART team.

Heavy equipment to assist in that type of work is scheduled to arrive later this week.

LaFlamme said the areas of greatest need are those rendered inaccessible by the tsunamis and are only accessible by helicopter.

They need overland access restored, she said.

Warm welcome

The Canadian Press reported that the Canadian convoy took 18 hours to get to Ampara. It started at 5 a.m. local time.

Along the way, it had to deal with two flats and two accidents -- and a delay caused by keys locked inside one truck.

Because of poor navigation, they gave residents of Godakawela a chance to shout "Hello Canada!" twice.

All along the journey, locals smiled, honked, gave a thumbs-up or saluted as Canadians passed by.

One such greeter quietly confided he had lost 150 relatives and friends -- residents of a fishing village that was entirely destroyed by the Dec. 26 tsunamis.

At least 30,000 people died in Sri Lanka, with total casualties totalling more than 150,000.

As they travelled, Canadian troops snapped pictures of monkeys swinging from vines, tea plantations, rice paddies -- and kept a close eye on�a huge lizard sunning itself beside the road.

In other tsunami related news:

• Ottawa revised its death toll to six Canadians killed. Another 37 missing and 285 are unaccounted for.
• Schools in Indonesia reopened for the first time since the tsunami, but thousands of desks sat empty. Many of the students, however, are homeless refugees.
• New video shows the chaos in a Sri Lankan town as the tsunami waves hit. Nearly 3,000 people died there.
• Sweden held a national memorial Monday for its dead and missing, which totals more than 1,000.

With a report from CTV's Lisa LaFlamme and files from The Canadian Press