From atop a slender, 130-foot radio tower, Aries Bangun, a recent graduate in electrical engineering, hung on nervously as he fiddled to connect a cable to a satellite dish earlier this month.

"I could see the devastation, the ruins, the beach line," he says, referring to the effects of the Dec. 26 tsunami.

Soon the dish was broadcasting a stream of data containing e-mails, text, and images up to a satellite and back down to Earth. Banda Aceh, capital of the province worst hit by the tsunami and earthquake, had just gone wireless. "I was a little afraid of aftershocks," says Mr. Aries with a chuckle.

Aries and 23 colleagues in Air Putih, an online chat group, are on a mission. Along with an alliance of computer enthusiasts, they are fighting to apply the powers of the Internet to help coordinate the world's largest humanitarian operation since World War II. Coordinated and supported by the Indonesian Information Technology Federation, an association which includes nine industry groups, they have formed the Aceh Media Center, an organization devoted to applying information technology to solving the humanitarian disaster of the province.

They've set up wireless Internet kiosks across the city for aid groups and journalists. Their website (acehmedia center.or.id/eng/)boasted more than 100,000 hits in less than a month of operations. The site includes frequent news updates and has a database of missing persons. Relief groups say that the service has been invaluable in helping them do their work as Banda Aceh slowly rebounds.

Now they want to expand their work. "We want to take wireless across Aceh," says Idris Suleiman, the Jakarta-based international coordinator, referring to Internet connections without cables. "It can be done."

The tsunami left more than 150,000 dead in Aceh and destroyed much of the province's essential infrastructure such as roads, power plants, and telephone lines. As aid organizations around the world made plans to gather food, tents, and medical supplies, members of the Aceh Media Center sent out pleas via e-mail for the tools that would help them to set up emergency Internet facilities. On Dec. 27, a day after the disaster, donated equipment began to pile up, including computers, wireless devices, cables, and very important, the VSAT - a portable satellite dish.

A two-man "advance team" then flew to Banda Aceh carrying 13 boxes of wireless equipment, cables, antennas, the VSAT, and a collapsible tower. "Our first objective was to assist the flow of data," says Anjar Ari Nugroho, an Air Putih member whose day job is an Internet service provider.

Drawing on previous experience in earthquakes, Mr. Anjar realized that distribution and coordination were the biggest hurdles in the beginning. "Some people get rice and need water; some people get water and need rice," he says.

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