Posted on 12/28/2004 8:14:26 AM PST by dead
The survivors have blank stares and do not speak. We walk together among black and bloated bodies still lying in the streets of Banda Aceh three days after the 25 minutes of terror that struck on Boxing Day morning.
"We thought it was the end of the world," says Sofyan Halim, who lost 15 members of his family.
Banda Aceh's 40,000 people have suffered greatly over the years, caught in a bitter fight between the Indonesian military and rebels struggling for independence from Jakarta. But nothing like this; never before such death and utter devastation.
Nobody here is talking about recovery, just survival.
This is just a slice of the devastation wreaked across 11 nations by an earthquake and resulting tsunami. The rescue mission here is painfully slow, just as it is in most of the stricken areas.
Only a 16-hour boat ride away, close to the epicentre of the earthquake, is an island of 100,000 people - all of them unaccounted for and beyond the reach of Indonesia's limited resources.
"We just don't know about them," a government official, Djoko Sumaryono, says of Simeulue. "No contact makes us fearful. We're trying to send helicopters there."
An Australian trying to reach Simeulue yesterday with vital aid and a satellite phone also fears the worst. "There will be people there with nothing, no fuel, no food, no water, nothing at all. The whole place is washed away I'd say," Brian Williams says.
Among the ruins of what used to be Banda Aceh's thriving market, shocked men and boys pick through the rubble, ignoring dozens, perhaps hundreds, of rotting bodies.
When the stink becomes unbearable, they cover their faces and continue their search for anything that will keep their families alive. Food is desperately short, so much so that people stand for hours in the sun outside the few shops untouched by the devastation in the hope they will open and sell them food.
Looting and lawlessness are other problems plaguing the region, but there are by no means the worst. The head of Banda Aceh's military hospital, Taufiq Urahman, says there are grave fears of an outbreak of cholera and typhoid. "Banda Aceh is paralysed," he says. "This is a very grim situation."
Survivors say the city was shaken first by two earthquakes, five minutes apart. Three tsunamis came 25 minutes later.
"The water was as high as a coconut palm," says Sofyan Halim. "All the debris came with it. People were screaming. Some got away, many didn't. The water went 15 kilometres inland in some places. It was all over in 25 minutes. That's all. How can that be ... such devastation."
It is difficult to imagine how Banda Aceh can rebuild itself. Trees, uprooted and dumped kilometres away, litter the streets, as do the twisted shells of cars. Layers of stinking mud cover everything and several of the biggest shopping centres have collapsed. Even the symbol of Aceh, the Baiturrahman mosque, has been badly damaged.
One of the many ruins, the three-storey Doctor Zainal Abidin Hospital, tells a particularly grim tale. "Children in emergency wards were killed [when the water hit]," says a nurse, Citra Nurhayat. "Soldier patients suffering from malaria helped to evacuate other patients."
Families sit in shock in the street or in the grounds of mosques. Only the children seem to cry; the parents seem numb with disbelief.
A 34-year-old mother, Nurhayati, says she has only had bananas to feed her three-month-old baby since Sunday. "I need baby food as well ... no aid has come to us yet."
Scores of badly injured people lie in the corridors and on verandahs of the only operating hospital in Banda Aceh. Patients have no water to drink and have only dry packed noodles to eat.
Saripah, 60, who could not hang on to her six-year-old granddaughter in the tsunami, came to the hospital yesterday for medicine. She was turned away. Outside was a 16-year-old girl who lost an entire family. She had been told there was nowhere to treat her leg wound. Nurses say there are thousands like them.
Survivors and rescue workers bring the dead to Lambaro, a village a few kilometres outside the city, and lay them under plastic sheets near a roundabout in the hope that relatives will come and identify them.
But the threat of disease and Muslim tradition that the dead be buried within 24 hours have prompted mass burials.
About 1500 victims, many of them children, were buried after a funeral on Monday night. There are so many bodies - officials say the death toll in Banda Aceh alone may be as high as 10,000 - that an excavator is digging graves on a two-hectare plot of land near the village.
Indonesian officials fear that communities and islands off the west coast of Sumatra may have been even harder hit.
Shortages of food, water and medicines in Banda Aceh are already causing anger among the Acehnese. Indra Utama, a community leader in the city, says the military must provide more urgent aid. "Where is the military?" he asks. "They're just taking care of their families. There is no war in Aceh now, why don't they help pick up the bodies in the street?"
However, the Indonesian military has started flying medical crews and badly needed emergency supplies into the area in Hercules and any other available aircraft from Medan. It admits much more is needed. At an emergency aid centre at the Banda Aceh parliament only biscuits and drinking water had arrived yesterday afternoon.
Brian Williams, who has lived on Simeulue since 2002, yesterday flew into Medan from Sydney with his wife, Dewi.
He is desperate to contact the island, where he runs a surfing and fishing tour business, but communications are down.
He believes the main town, Sinabang, has been "wiped out".
Mr Williams plans to make the 16-hour trip to Simeulue on a boat laden with Australian aid. "I just want to make sure they're all right and get them some help."
Death toll
Sri Lanka: 17,640
India: 8523
Indonesia: 27,174
Thailand: 1439
Malaysia: 65
Burma: 90
Maldives: 55
Bangladesh: 2
Somalia 100
Tanzania 10
Total: 55,098
The idea that the death toll in Burma is only 90 is a crock....
However, given the criminal incompetents running that country, we'll likely never get any accurate news of what happened there.
I'd wondered about Simelue myself; I had seen pop. estimates of 30,000, not 100,000.
And there are o medium-sized cities besides Banda Aceh (at the tip) on the S coast of Sumatra.
I am speechless.....
This is becoming close to unfathomable. My husband and I really want to help out financially, but it's hard to know which aid organization is the best to give to. We were thinking Oxfam America, but I'm willing to entertain suggestions from fellow FReepers as well...I just want my money going to the place that it most useful right now.
It is just quite heartbreaking.
Oh my god..
The final count is going to be unbelievable.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/110419711467.htm
Bump, I would like to know the answer to your question as well.
A friend talked to someone in Rangoon yesterday, the city at least did not get hit - surprising since it looks like it is in direct line of the waves.
This may answer your question of what happened to those areas near the epicenter.
The scenes of people being washed away on the news are horrific.
I don't mean to be crass when I bring this up but when faced with death on such a scale, I found myself asking, "How many people die each day across the globe?". It turns out that the answer is right around 150,000 (about a 1% annual mortality rate).
Let me say again that I am not in any way trying to minimize the suffering that is occurring in Asia right now. I just thought it was intersting, in a morbid sort of way, that the current total of around 50,000 is about 1/3 of the average death toll that occurs worldwide everyday. I found that to be a somewhat surreal perspective.
What is the source of these numbers? Thanks.
The Jakarta Post reports that Simeulue escaped largely unscathed. It appears the tsunami had not yet built up to anything like its full force when it struck the island:
Simeulue escapes worst of quake damage
JAKARTA (JP): Simeulue island off the western coast of Sumatra escaped the worst of the damage from Sunday's powerful earthquake and tsunamis, a television station reported on Tuesday.
"Simeulue island is just some 40 kilometers from the epicenter but we have just received reports that it suffered no major damage," Metro TV reported from Banda Aceh.
"The tsunami (that hit the island) was only about one-meter high," the station reported.
In other parts of Sumatra and countries around the Indian Ocean, the tsunamis were reported to be as high as 10 meters.
With communication lines cut, officials have yet to get casualty figures from many regions along the western coast of Aceh province.
AFP reported only about 20 percent of the buildings in the town of Meulaboh in Aceh were still standing following the earthquake and tsunami.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillatestnews.asp?fileid=20041228152314&irec=6
I did work with Oxfam in Ethiopia during the famine, they are a good group. The other charity I trust is Salvation Army.
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