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."
I gave to Catholic Relief Services. You can direct your contribution to the tsunami relief effort. I believe that 98% or so of you contribution is used for relief aid.
www.catholicrelief.org
"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."
Hugh Hewitt likes these guys - World Vision
http://donate.wvus.org/OA_HTML/xxwvibeCCtpItmDspRte.jsp?section=10025&item=1168287&lid=tsunami_donate&lpos=main1text
I was thinking I was a little ahead to finally donate some to freerepublic after donating $300.00 to the Red Cross this year, but it looks like I will have to make another donation to the Red Cross. Hope you understand Jim Robinson.
I didn't mean to imply that they weren't. I guess my point is that when I first heard the numbers, my first thought was that it could have a material impact on annual global mortality. Once I looked at it, I was surprised to find that is was less than one days worth.
As I go back and read this post, I realized it is an example of some of the weird thoughts people have when faced with such a dramatic event. It's hard to get your mind around it.
Hugh Hewitt spoke highly of World Vision (www.worldvision.org) as being a very honest, respected and efficient faith based aid group, indicating over 90% of your donation will go to good use. Stay way from the Red Cross, that's for sure...
One charity that flies food and medicine is Americares
http://www.americares.org/
I am having a difficult time understanding how Somalia fits into this. I thought Somalia was in Africa.
The tsunami apparently made it all the way to Somalia while retaining significant force.
Somalia is part of Africa. But it borders on the Indian Ocean. They were hit by the tsunami. 6 hours after the earthquake.
There were many killed and a lot of damage from a tsunami in Japan, in 1960, caused by an earthquake off the coast of Chile, South America.
Since the island of Simeulue has been heard from and all is well there, perhaps the thread title should be modified to make that clear.
AmeriCares Foundation | 88 Hamilton Avenue | Stamford, CT 06902 | (800) 486-HELP | (800) 486-4357
AmeriCares Foundation | 88 Hamilton Avenue | Stamford, CT 06902 | (800) 486-HELP | (800) 486-4357
http://www.americares.org/
It IS in Africa, the tsunami travelled that far. Even Kenya got hit.
Somalia does not border the Indian Ocean, it borders the Arabian Sea. :)
Ahh!! The geography police have arrived.
Thank God for a bit of good news. I also had my eyes on those islands off the western Sumatran coast, thinking THAT was where the very, very worst would be.
Let's hope for a miracle in the Andamans now, where 30,000 (!) were still missing.
World Vision is VERY good. I hear nothing but good about their work. 95% of money donated goes directly to the disaster. That's where we are donating.
Interesting in that I would have figured Bangladesh would have had many more casualties, it doesn't take much there to kill thousands.
CIA World Factbook: Somalia Location: Eastern Africa, bordering the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, east of Ethiopia
Even if one made the strained case that the Arabian Sea wasn't part of the Indian Ocean, and that there was some invisible line separating it from the Indian Ocean, most of the coast of Somalia would be south of that invisible line dividing the Arabian Sea from the Indian Ocean.
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