Posted on 12/28/2004 6:41:23 AM PST by NYer
The biggest humanitarian relief operation ever mounted was underway along Asia's devastated shores as the death toll from a massive earthquake and the tidal waves it unleashed was predicted to hit 45,000.
With the scale of the catastrophe still unfolding the confirmed death toll passed 27,000 in nine countries -- but Indonesia warned that it alone could have suffered up to 20,000 more fatalities on top of its official figure of 4,725 deaths.
Indonesia's Vice President Yusuf Kalla, who is in charge of coordinating relief efforts, said he estimated that "21,000 to 25,000 people" had been killed in Sunday's disaster.
The quake, the biggest in 40 years at 9.0 on the Richter scale, ruptured the Indian Ocean seabed off Indonesia's Sumatra island, sending huge waves thousands of kilometres (miles) to kill and destroy in countries around southern and southeast Asia and even in Africa.
Mass funerals were taking place amid scenes of traumatic grief as bodies lay rotting along coastlines throughout the region, lending weight to fears that outbreaks of disease could unleash a second wave of tragedy on a region struggling to cope with the first.
"The people should be buried and the animals should be destroyed and disposed of before they infect the drinking water. It's a massive operation," said UN disaster relief coordinator Jan Egeland.
Gruesome scenes met emergency teams in the worst hit countries of Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and Thailand, while the death tolls ticked up even in the less affected areas of Malaysia, the Maldives and Myanmar.
As survivors were evacuated from stricken areas tales of the full horror of carnage wrought by the tidal waves emerged: babies torn from their parents' hands, children and the elderly hurled out to sea from their homes, entire villages swept away.
Hundreds of rescue ships, helicopters and planes were mobilised to evacuate tourists from wrecked resorts and airlift stricken victims to hospitals already overflowing with the injured and corpses.
The UN's Egeland told a press conference at UN headquarters in New York that relief operations would be the biggest ever as the destruction was not confined to one country or region.
"The cost of the devastation will be in the billions of dollars. It would probably be many billions of dollars," he said.
In Sri Lanka, where the death toll neared 12,000, bodies pulled from washed out trains, cars, devastated buildings and beaches, were being buried in mass funerals along the southern coastal areas.
The government waived normal legal procedures to dispose of the thousands of bodies to help stave off the threat of disease.
Drinking water wells were already badly contaminated with sea water, government minister Susil Premajayantha said, but the biggest fear is of water contamination by decomposing bodies which could spark epidemics of diseases such as cholera and typhoid, experts warned.
"The biggest health challenges we are facing are the spread of waterborne diseases," said International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies health official Hakan Sandbladh.
Compounding the problem is the huge number of people left homeless, with Sandbladh's organisation saying there were one million people displaced in Sri Lanka alone and 29,000 more in Thailand.
Thousands were also homeless in Indonesia's Aceh province, which bore the brunt of the temblor, hit at point-blank range and then battered by a tsunami.
There were post-apocalyptic scenes in the main city of Banda Aceh, where the stench of death hung over the rubble of houses, while reports trickling in from Aceh's southwestern coast spoke of an almost complete obliteration of a shoreline that is home to an estimated one million people.
"All 17 villages on the coast are no longer there," said Teungku Zulkarnaini, the head of the southwestern Nagan Raya district.
In southern India vultures gathered as survivors grimly buried or burnt their dead. The death toll passed 7,500 Tuesday, with thousands more missing.
Rescuers were anxious to discover the fate of 30,000 people unaccounted for in India's Andaman and Nicobar islands, which are close to the epicentre of the earthquake.
G.C. Gupta, a district official in the Andaman archipelago, 1,200 kilometres (745 miles) from mainland India, said some 30,000 were still missing in the tropical islands known as a vacation paradise where at least 3,000 are known to have died.
"Villages are spread all over. There are 30,000 people that need to be accounted for. Some may have fled into the interior jungles or been swept to sea," said Gupta.
Witnesses spoke of waves "taller than buildings" that crashed into the islands spread over 800 kilometres (500 miles).
On the southern Indian mainland, the death toll was expected to mount with tens of thousands still missing. Cranes dug mass graves and mourners built funeral pyres as vultures gathered where bodies still lay in the open. Funerals were carried out in a rush with minimum ritual.
Tens of thousands spent the night huddling in emergency relief camps as the government stepped up relief efforts and the Indian Red Cross appealed for food, clothes and tarpaulins.
In the worst-hit Indian state of Tamil Nadu, fisherman A. Ravi wept as he recalled watching his family, including four children, swept away as his village was flattened.
"We went fishing in the early morning and a few hours later the water started swirling around us and suddenly the level went down so sharply we could see the seabed," said Ravi.
"Then I saw a huge sheet of water going towards the shore... when I got back I found my village under water and my family gone," he said.
Similar stories of personal tragedy were repeated throught the region, with new horrors revealed each time rescuers reach previously cut off areas.
In Thailand, more than 700 foreign tourists are believed to be among the total of 990 dead.
"The latest figure we have is more than 990 confirmed deaths. Of these some 200 were Thais and the rest were foreigners," Sutham Sangprathum told reporters before a cabinet meeting on the disaster.
In the tourist resort of Khao Lak, scores of bodies found scattered on streets and among trees were piled into trucks by emergency crews, with up to 150 corpses on a single flatbed truck seen by an AFP photographer.
Hundreds of rescue workers and soldiers in white face masks were still pulling the dead out of the mud, or retrieving them from forests or ruined buildings.
For four to five kilometres (2.5-3 miles) through the town, the scene was of utter devastation and the destruction stretched two kilometres inland.
Almost 29,000 people were evacuated from the Thailand's affected areas, which included the resort islands of Phuket and Phi Phi where thousands of European tourists had been enjoying holidays.
Hardly a building was left standing on Phi Phi island east of Phuket, where bodies were seen strewn about the island, covered in white cloths before being taken away by emergency crews or Western tourist volunteers.
"I saw bodies almost everywhere on land, and in the water too, and I think there are many more bodies trapped under the bungalow debris," said rescuer Wirat Mansa-ad, estimating 300 died on the island alone.
As Thailand mobilised its army and navy in a huge rescue operation, dazed foreigners began flying home -- still struggling to come to grips with what had happened.
Melina Heppell, a six-month-old baby girl from Australia, was swept from her father's arms on Patong Beach, Phuket, when a tsunami wave hit, her uncle Simon Illingworth said on Australian television.
"They were walking along Patong Beach yesterday... he thought he had the baby in his hands, but all he had was clothes," Illingworth said, tears streaming down his cheeks.
The waves triggered by the quake were so powerful that the destruction reached the shores of Africa about 7,000 kilometres (4,000 miles) away, killing more than 100 Somali fishermen.
The tragedy has sparked a growing chorus of calls throughout the region for a tsunami alert system, as many victims were swept from coastlines hours after the quake which triggered the giant waves was recorded.
burs-lb/pch
Death toll will top 70,000 and that is before disease sets in.
Bodies of victims of the tsunami that hit on Sunday lie on Khao Lak beach, about 900 km (560 miles) south of Bangkok, December 28, 2004. Searchers have retrieved 770 bodies, both foreigners and Thais, along the Khao Lak beach north of Thailand's Phuket resort island, a regional disaster official said on Tuesday. The beach in Phang Nga province appears to be the area worst hit in Thailand by Sunday's tidal waves that were triggered by an earthquake.
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
According to UN spokesman, $15 mill pledged by US for disaster relief- stingy! Why don't we just once let these 3rd world nations take care of their own problems?!
The amount was upped, significantly, too, from this $15 mil.
We continue to allow them to bite our hand as we feed them.
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