Rescue workers race to head off second wave of deaths in Aceh
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31.12.2004 Jakarta (dpa) |
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 Chaos on the streets |
The official death toll in Aceh and surrounding areas on Sumatra island following the tsunamis that struck on Sunday morning and wiped out entire villages has already climbed to 79,940. The figure is widely predicted to jump much higher as assessment teams reach previously inaccessible areas and determine how many died in the initial flooding.
But the most immediate concern for the Indonesian government and international aid agencies is to help the countless people who are battling starvation and injuries that have been left untreated for nearly a week. "The indications are the disaster is going to be a lot worse than we have anticipated already," United Nations Children's Fund communications director John Budd told AFP by telephone from Jakarta. "Aceh really is ground zero... there are miles and miles and miles of nothing." Budd said there was a desperate shortage of food and fuel across the remote province, which had already suffered from a lack of infrastructure due to a decades-long violent battle between separatist rebels and the government. "There's no food, there's no fuel, it's a cruel situation. If we get food in, say, rice, there is no pure water or fuel to cook it. We are desperately trying to break this cycle," he said. Budd described a near-total collapse of the medical infrastructure in Aceh, with just one very basic hospital functioning in the capital of Banda Aceh. "It is getting extremely grim. The problem is untreated injuries. They can be quite minor, but if there is no proper treatment, the potential for them to die is extremely high," he said. "There are no medical supplies getting in there. The medical infrastructure has collapsed. The potential for that (many deaths) happening is increasing every minute."
Quelle: http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillatestnews.asp?fileid=20041231143318&irec=7
JAKARTA, Dec 31 (AFP) - The death toll in Indonesia from the massive earthquake and tsunami that has devastated Asia could reach up to 100,000, the health ministry said Friday. Spokeswoman Marian Reksoprojo, quoting the country's health minister, said the death toll was expected to increase beyond the current confirmed figure of 80,000 in and around the worst-hit province of Aceh on Sumatra island. "The minister said that the number of dead victims in Aceh and North Sumatra could reach 100,000," Reksoprojo said.
Quelle: http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillatestnews.asp?fileid=20041231151707&irec=3
Grimly, Indonesia attempts to bury its dead
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia—The two men stepped carefully along the boards that traversed the mud, working to keep their balance. They strained under the weight of their sister's body, wrapped in a black bag suspended from a wooden plank. They had spent four days searching for her, battling the growing stench of unclaimed and decomposing corpses. Yesterday, they finally found her remains, not far from the wood and concrete rubble of what was once her home along the road to Uleelheue port. The night before, Arfanadi, 41, had dreamed of her. "She beckoned me," he said. "She waved to me. But she couldn't say anything.''
Yesterday was the day that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had set as a deadline for government officials to retrieve and bury the 80,000 people killed in Sunday morning's earthquake and resulting tsunami. But by afternoon, hundreds of corpses still lay along the muddy streets of this provincial capital, arms and legs akimbo under ragged sarongs and sheets. As many as 40,000 people are estimated to have been killed in Banda Aceh alone.
Maj.-Gen. Sjafrie Sjamsuddin, the Indonesian military spokesperson, said soldiers had recovered 2,500 bodies in Banda Aceh on Wednesday and hundreds more yesterday. More troops were on the way, he added. "I've seen the military doing it, but there's a long way to go," said Michael Elmquist, head of the U.N. Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Indonesia.
At the top of Sultan Iskandar Muda St., in the centre of the city, a team of 40 soldiers scavenged through a three-storey white school, still partly standing, for the remains of about 50 adults and children thought to be inside. They yanked away board after board, slab after slab, exposing a few corpses. But a lieutenant said that without heavy equipment his men would be unable to recover most of the bodies. Nearby, on the road toward Uleelheue, the task of retrieving large numbers of bodies was out of the question. Blocked in many places by high hills of rubble, the road had become impassable except on foot. So Arfanadi and his brother, Iskandar, set off with four other family members on the hour-long hike to their sister Ita's home in a private quest to find her remains.
Under the blistering tropical sun, they prepared to haul the body back. But they put it down on the pavement to tell their story. Iskandar, 40, wore a white scarf around his neck, which he draped across his mouth and nose when the odour grew too strong. His hands and shoes were caked with mud. He said they had to dig Ita out from under concrete slabs that had at first concealed her from the brothers.
Arfanadi, stubble growing thick on his face and his black hair plastered back with sweat, said Ita was clinging to a tree when they found her, apparently in a last frantic effort to avoid being carried off by the sea.
The brothers had last seen Ita on Saturday evening, when she stopped at their house in the northern Aceh city of Lhokseumawe on her way home from a neighbouring province, where she worked weekdays as a social worker.
"I told her to stay with me until the morning," Arfanadi recalled. But Ita insisted on leaving Lhokseumawe, which was much less viciously battered by the tsunami, and making the six-hour trip back to Banda Aceh. At about 8 a.m. Sunday, the earthquake rocked the province. Iskandar called his sister on her cellphone to check on her. But just as the call went through, the massive wave crashed into Aceh. "All of a sudden, the connection cut off," he said. The brothers finished their tale and bent down to hoist the plank back onto their shoulders. From where they stood, the view toward the ocean was a tremendous vista of destruction, hundreds of acres of city blocks reduced to rubble, only a few palm trees and even fewer buildings breaking the horizon. The port's ferry terminal was a concrete skeleton.
Quelle: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/
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