NJFFSA16
12-30-2004, 06:54 AM
The words speak volumes. The pictures from these countries can not convey the magnitude of this disaster. The smell of death is beyond comprehension.How would your area deal with a tragedy of this scope?
By Tomi Soetjipto and Dean Yates
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Reeking corpses
rotted in the tropical sun from India to Indonesia on Wednesday
and many who escaped death from one of the worst tsunamis in
history fought for survival against thirst and disease.
Rescuers scoured remote coastlines around the Indian Ocean
for survivors of Sunday's colossal seawater surge triggered by
an earthquake that caused an arc of death across southern Asia
and may have made the world wobble on its axis.
"I would not be at all surprised that we will be on 100,000
(deaths) when we know what has happened on the (Indian) Andaman
and Nicobar islands," Peter Rees of the International Federation
of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.
The federation currently puts the death toll at 77,828,
making it one of the world's worst natural disasters.
In parts of India's Tamil Nadu state, officials gave up
counting the dead in their hurry to bury them in mass graves.
The United Nations mobilised its biggest relief operation as
fears that cholera and diarrhoea could further worsen the death
toll. The World Health Organisation said five million people
lacked the essentials of food, water and sanitation to survive.
"There is no food here whatsoever. We need rice. We need
petrol. We need medicine," said Vaiti Usman, an Indonesian woman
in her mid-30s in the devastated Aceh province in Indonesia
where tens of thousands died. "I haven't eaten in two days."
In many areas, health experts said the relief operation
looked woefully inadequate with shortages of coffins, equipment
and medicine, while emergency workers struggled with power
outages, destroyed communications and badly damaged roads.
FULL TRAGEDY UNFOLDS
Disease could kill as many people as the wave, health
experts said as the full extent of the tragedy began to unfold.
"I have lost three brothers, four sisters, and my father is
missing," wept 18-year-old Tamil fisherman Rajan Xavier.
Scandinavia and Germany, fond of Asia as a winter refuge,
faced the fact that the tsunami had turned the tropical paradise
into hell for hundreds of friends and loved ones.
More than 2,000 Scandinavians and about 1,000 Germans were
still missing on Wednesday, a full three days after disaster
struck. At least 600 Italians were missing.
Primitive tribes on India's remote Andaman and Nicobar
islands were running out of the coconuts they were living on,
with whole communities wiped out. The power of the tsunami
changed local geography, splitting one island, Trinket, in two.
Buddhist monks handed out rice and curry to survivors in Sri
Lanka and aircraft dropped food to isolated Indonesian towns.
In Thailand, where thousands of tourists were on Christmas
breaks escaping the northern winter, idyllic resorts were turned
into graveyards. Near Khao Lak beach,the stench of decaying
bodies hung over a Thai Buddhist temple-turned morgue.
"We have only cloth to wrap the bodies in and our bare hands
and machetes to retrieve the bodies," Surasit Kantipantukul, one
rescuer in Pang Nga province where Khao Lak is located, said.
"We want machinery and boats."
Some Thai officials said their equipment was embarrassing.
"Taiwanese and German teams have cable cameras to go through
holes to look for bodies or sonar to search for living objects,"
Environment Minister Suwit Khunkitti said of foreign rescue
teams. "Our workers have only noses to smell for foul odours."
APOCALYPTIC DESTRUCTION
Survivors told harrowing tales of the moment the tsunami
struck villages and resorts, sucking holidaymakers into the sea,
surging through buildings, sweeping away cars and smashing ships
in an apocalyptic rage of destruction.
"The water was just too strong," said Surya Darmar, lying on
an army cot in Banda Aceh with a broken leg. "I held my children
for as long as I could, but they were swept away."
In the midst of tragedy, there were tales of luck.
Thirteen-year-old Indian Meghna Rajasekhar survived after
drifting at sea for two days clinging to a door. "For two days
when she was drifting, she encountered turtles and snakes in the
night," one official said, relating her tale of survival.
A 14-month-old Swedish toddler was found wrapped in a
blanket on a hill in Phuket, Thailand, by an American couple
while in Khao Lak a two-year-old fisherman's son survived for
more than two days after being swept into a tree trop.
Indonesia suffered the biggest number of victims, with
45,268 known to be dead, although the toll could rise to 80,000
in Aceh alone, the province closest to the quake's epicentre.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono spoke of "frightening
reports" from Aceh province, on the northern tip of Sumatra.
Troops and rescue crews reached the town of Meulaboh on
Aceh's west coast, about 150 km (90 miles) from the epicentre,
to find dead bodies and rubble.
"Today so far 3,400 bodies have been found in Meulaboh.
Eighty percent of the buildings are wrecked," Chief Security
Minister Widodo Adi Sutjipto said. A senior U.N. official in
Indonesia said the toll in Meulaboh could reach 40,000.
STENCH OF DEATH
The stench of decomposing bodies spread over the provincial
capital, Banda Aceh, where as many as five percent of the
300,000 population were believed dead, as shocked survivors
wandered among the rubble in search of lost family.
"I have given up searching for their bodies," said Rohani
Amad, 40, wiping her eyes with a black Muslim headscarf, days
after two sisters and her 16-year-old daughter disappeared. "I
have lost my house. I just don't know what to do," she sobbed.
In Sri Lanka, where the death toll topped 22,400, Tamil
Tiger rebels appealed for help as they dug mass graves to bury
thousands of bodies. All 135 children at an orphanage run by
women rebels were killed.
Hambantota, a tourist haven on the southern coast, was wiped
out. Sri Lankan army soldiers were still pulling hundreds of
bloated bodies out of the mangrove behind the town.
"The people were washed away and trapped in the roots," an
officer said. "Only after time do they all come up."
Each new tide loosens hundreds more corpses to add to the
over 2,500 that were buried outside what remained of the town.
India's toll of nearly 7,000 was likely to rise sharply.
Many of the dead were on the Andaman and Nicobar islands.
More than 1,800 bodies were recovered from Khao Lak beach
and more than 3,000 people may have died there. More than 300
dead were on Phi Phi island, location of the film "The Beach."
Bloated and decaying bodies washed ashore on the island as
hopes of finding survivors amid the rubble faded.
"It's hard to tell which bodies are foreign because they are
just unrecognisable," said French rescue volunteer Serge Barros.
DNA tests might be used to identify some victims.
Hundreds of people were killed in the Maldives, Myanmar and
Malaysia. The wave struck as far away as Somalia and Kenya.
The region has seen huge killer waves before, including one
when Krakatoa erupted off southern Sumatra in 1883, but Indian
Ocean countries have no tsunami warning system.
Out of respect for victims of the tragedy, Sri Lanka's
cricket tour of New Zealand was postponed while the Australian
cricket team donated its prize money for winning a test against
Pakistan to a fund for the tsunami victims.
(Additional reporting by Darren Schuettler in Khao Lak)
(For more news about emergency relief visit Reuters AlertNet
http:/www.alertnet.org email: alertnet+reuters.com; +44 207 542
24 32)
Reut12:20 12-29-04
By Tomi Soetjipto and Dean Yates
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Reeking corpses
rotted in the tropical sun from India to Indonesia on Wednesday
and many who escaped death from one of the worst tsunamis in
history fought for survival against thirst and disease.
Rescuers scoured remote coastlines around the Indian Ocean
for survivors of Sunday's colossal seawater surge triggered by
an earthquake that caused an arc of death across southern Asia
and may have made the world wobble on its axis.
"I would not be at all surprised that we will be on 100,000
(deaths) when we know what has happened on the (Indian) Andaman
and Nicobar islands," Peter Rees of the International Federation
of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.
The federation currently puts the death toll at 77,828,
making it one of the world's worst natural disasters.
In parts of India's Tamil Nadu state, officials gave up
counting the dead in their hurry to bury them in mass graves.
The United Nations mobilised its biggest relief operation as
fears that cholera and diarrhoea could further worsen the death
toll. The World Health Organisation said five million people
lacked the essentials of food, water and sanitation to survive.
"There is no food here whatsoever. We need rice. We need
petrol. We need medicine," said Vaiti Usman, an Indonesian woman
in her mid-30s in the devastated Aceh province in Indonesia
where tens of thousands died. "I haven't eaten in two days."
In many areas, health experts said the relief operation
looked woefully inadequate with shortages of coffins, equipment
and medicine, while emergency workers struggled with power
outages, destroyed communications and badly damaged roads.
FULL TRAGEDY UNFOLDS
Disease could kill as many people as the wave, health
experts said as the full extent of the tragedy began to unfold.
"I have lost three brothers, four sisters, and my father is
missing," wept 18-year-old Tamil fisherman Rajan Xavier.
Scandinavia and Germany, fond of Asia as a winter refuge,
faced the fact that the tsunami had turned the tropical paradise
into hell for hundreds of friends and loved ones.
More than 2,000 Scandinavians and about 1,000 Germans were
still missing on Wednesday, a full three days after disaster
struck. At least 600 Italians were missing.
Primitive tribes on India's remote Andaman and Nicobar
islands were running out of the coconuts they were living on,
with whole communities wiped out. The power of the tsunami
changed local geography, splitting one island, Trinket, in two.
Buddhist monks handed out rice and curry to survivors in Sri
Lanka and aircraft dropped food to isolated Indonesian towns.
In Thailand, where thousands of tourists were on Christmas
breaks escaping the northern winter, idyllic resorts were turned
into graveyards. Near Khao Lak beach,the stench of decaying
bodies hung over a Thai Buddhist temple-turned morgue.
"We have only cloth to wrap the bodies in and our bare hands
and machetes to retrieve the bodies," Surasit Kantipantukul, one
rescuer in Pang Nga province where Khao Lak is located, said.
"We want machinery and boats."
Some Thai officials said their equipment was embarrassing.
"Taiwanese and German teams have cable cameras to go through
holes to look for bodies or sonar to search for living objects,"
Environment Minister Suwit Khunkitti said of foreign rescue
teams. "Our workers have only noses to smell for foul odours."
APOCALYPTIC DESTRUCTION
Survivors told harrowing tales of the moment the tsunami
struck villages and resorts, sucking holidaymakers into the sea,
surging through buildings, sweeping away cars and smashing ships
in an apocalyptic rage of destruction.
"The water was just too strong," said Surya Darmar, lying on
an army cot in Banda Aceh with a broken leg. "I held my children
for as long as I could, but they were swept away."
In the midst of tragedy, there were tales of luck.
Thirteen-year-old Indian Meghna Rajasekhar survived after
drifting at sea for two days clinging to a door. "For two days
when she was drifting, she encountered turtles and snakes in the
night," one official said, relating her tale of survival.
A 14-month-old Swedish toddler was found wrapped in a
blanket on a hill in Phuket, Thailand, by an American couple
while in Khao Lak a two-year-old fisherman's son survived for
more than two days after being swept into a tree trop.
Indonesia suffered the biggest number of victims, with
45,268 known to be dead, although the toll could rise to 80,000
in Aceh alone, the province closest to the quake's epicentre.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono spoke of "frightening
reports" from Aceh province, on the northern tip of Sumatra.
Troops and rescue crews reached the town of Meulaboh on
Aceh's west coast, about 150 km (90 miles) from the epicentre,
to find dead bodies and rubble.
"Today so far 3,400 bodies have been found in Meulaboh.
Eighty percent of the buildings are wrecked," Chief Security
Minister Widodo Adi Sutjipto said. A senior U.N. official in
Indonesia said the toll in Meulaboh could reach 40,000.
STENCH OF DEATH
The stench of decomposing bodies spread over the provincial
capital, Banda Aceh, where as many as five percent of the
300,000 population were believed dead, as shocked survivors
wandered among the rubble in search of lost family.
"I have given up searching for their bodies," said Rohani
Amad, 40, wiping her eyes with a black Muslim headscarf, days
after two sisters and her 16-year-old daughter disappeared. "I
have lost my house. I just don't know what to do," she sobbed.
In Sri Lanka, where the death toll topped 22,400, Tamil
Tiger rebels appealed for help as they dug mass graves to bury
thousands of bodies. All 135 children at an orphanage run by
women rebels were killed.
Hambantota, a tourist haven on the southern coast, was wiped
out. Sri Lankan army soldiers were still pulling hundreds of
bloated bodies out of the mangrove behind the town.
"The people were washed away and trapped in the roots," an
officer said. "Only after time do they all come up."
Each new tide loosens hundreds more corpses to add to the
over 2,500 that were buried outside what remained of the town.
India's toll of nearly 7,000 was likely to rise sharply.
Many of the dead were on the Andaman and Nicobar islands.
More than 1,800 bodies were recovered from Khao Lak beach
and more than 3,000 people may have died there. More than 300
dead were on Phi Phi island, location of the film "The Beach."
Bloated and decaying bodies washed ashore on the island as
hopes of finding survivors amid the rubble faded.
"It's hard to tell which bodies are foreign because they are
just unrecognisable," said French rescue volunteer Serge Barros.
DNA tests might be used to identify some victims.
Hundreds of people were killed in the Maldives, Myanmar and
Malaysia. The wave struck as far away as Somalia and Kenya.
The region has seen huge killer waves before, including one
when Krakatoa erupted off southern Sumatra in 1883, but Indian
Ocean countries have no tsunami warning system.
Out of respect for victims of the tragedy, Sri Lanka's
cricket tour of New Zealand was postponed while the Australian
cricket team donated its prize money for winning a test against
Pakistan to a fund for the tsunami victims.
(Additional reporting by Darren Schuettler in Khao Lak)
(For more news about emergency relief visit Reuters AlertNet
http:/www.alertnet.org email: alertnet+reuters.com; +44 207 542
24 32)
Reut12:20 12-29-04