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Massive
Quake, Tsunamis Kill Thousands in South Asia
Death
Toll Tops 119,000
Major
Relief Effort Under Way
By
CHRIS BRUMMITT
APBANDA ACEH,
Indonesia (Dec. 31) - Pilots dropped food to Indonesian
villagers stranded among bloating corpses Thursday, while police
in a devastated provincial capital stripped looters of their
clothing and forced them to sit on the street as a warning to
others. The death toll topped 119,000, and officials warned that
5 million people lack clean water, shelter, food, sanitation and
medicine.
American planes
delivered medical staff to Sri Lanka and body bags to Thailand,
while a Thai air base used by B-52 bombers during the Vietnam
War was becoming a hub for a U.S. military-led relief effort
that will stretch along the Indian Ocean.
On Friday, a U.S.
Navy aircraft carrier battle group led by the USS Abraham
Lincoln churned toward hard-hit Sumatra, expecting to reach
there the following day and possibly meet up with naval ships
from Singapore and Australia, officials said.
Sailors in
Singapore scrambled to depart aboard the RSN Endurance, a
450-foot landing ship tank that's carrying bulldozers,
heavy-lifting equipment, food and medical supplies. In
Australia, the HMAS Kanimbla was leaving Sydney transporting two
helicopters, about 300 defense personnel and construction
equipment to help clear debris and begin rebuilding Aceh
province.
As a colossal
international rescue effort struggled off the ground, relief
efforts suffered a hitch when a false alarm of more killer waves
sparked panic in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand and sent
survivors and aid workers fleeing.
Indian women at a
makeshift camp in a marriage hall said their children were going
hungry. "For the past few days we were at least getting
food,'' said Selvi, 35, who uses one name. "Today, we
didn't even get that because aid workers fled the town after a
fresh alert was issued this morning.''
The false alarm
from the Indian government was just one of the new and sometimes
unexpected threats facing survivors.
Sister Charity, a
32-year-old nun rescued by an Indian navy ship from the Andaman
and Nicobar Islands on Wednesday, said confused and hungry
crocodiles were on the loose.
"As we were
returning (to the ship), two or three crocodiles started coming
toward us. The navy officers had to fire their revolvers to ward
off the crocodiles to protect us,'' she told The Associated
Press.
Death tolls across
the region continued to grow Friday as Thailand announced a near
doubling of its figure to more than 4,500. Officials said that
number included 2,230 foreigners, a near tripling the number of
confirmed foreign deaths in Thailand.
Indonesia led the
fatal count with some 80,000 dead, though Health Minister Siti
Fadillah Supadi on Friday said the toll could reach 100,000
because officials were finding many bodies on the remote
northwest coast of Sumatra island.
Sri Lanka reported
27,200 and India more than 7,300. A total of more than 300 were
killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia,
Tanzania and Kenya.
The U.S. death toll
was officially raised Thursday from 12 to 14, with seven dead in
Thailand and seven in Sri Lanka. Some 600 Americans who were
listed as missing have been found, State Department spokesman
Richard Boucher said, but several thousand had not been located
four days after the disaster struck.
In Sri Lanka,
Americans have been showing up at U.S. consular offices wearing
bathing suits, with no money and no clothes, said Boucher.
In the remote
Indian islands near the epicenter of Sunday's magnitude-9.0
earthquake, entire villages were wiped out. With only 400 bodies
found so far, the region's administrator said 10,000 people were
missing. Survivors who reached the archipelago's main city, Port
Blair, said they had not eaten for two days.
Around the Indian
Rim and beyond, families endured their fifth day of ignorance as
to the fate of friends and relatives who had taken a
holiday-season vacation to the sunny beaches of Thailand, India
and Sri Lanka, which bore the brunt of the tsunami. Thousands
were still missing, including at least 2,500 Swedes, more than
1,000 Germans and 500 each from France and Denmark.
Military ships and
planes rushed aid to Sumatra's ravaged coast. Countless corpses
strewn on the streets rotted under the tropical sun causing a
nearly unbearable stench.
In Banda Aceh, the
devastated main city of northern Sumatra, soldiers and police
guarded abandoned shops in the city's market amid fears of
looting. Three alleged looters caught by police were put on the
street stripped to their underpants as a deterrent.
Food drops began
along the coast, mostly of instant noodles and medicines, with
some of the areas "hard to reach because they are
surrounded by cliffs,'' said Budi Aditutro, head of the
government's relief team.
The World Health
Organization said it needed $40 million to supply 3-5 million
people with clean water, shelter, food, sanitation and health
care.
"Unless the
necessary funds are urgently mobilized and coordinated in the
field we could see as many fatalities from diseases as we have
seen from the actual disaster itself,'' said Dr. David Nabarro,
head of crisis operations at WHO.
The next few days
will be critical in controlling any potential outbreak of
waterborne diseases in areas affected by the Indian Ocean
tsunamis, Nabarro told the AP. The main threat to public health
was drinking water that had been contaminated with feces.
"Wells, water
supply systems just get broken, and then whatever water you do
get is liable to be contaminated,'' Nabarro said.
Governments have so
far donated some $500 million, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
said, adding that he was "satisfied'' by the response, even
though another U.N. earlier complained that the West had been
"stingy'' in the past.
Responding to
persistent criticism that U.S. pledges have been slow to
materialize and deliveries of aid not fast enough, Boucher
ticked off a string of relief flights and declared: "Any
implication we are not leading the way is wrong.''
The United States,
India, Australia, Japan and the United Nations have formed an
international coalition to coordinate worldwide relief and
reconstruction efforts.
In Galle, the
graceful old city on the southern tip of Sri Lanka, German and
Finnish teams helped set up water plants and mobile clinics.
A U.S. Air Force
plane arrived in the capital, Colombo, bringing 26 medical
specialists from the Army, Marines and Air Force, which form
part of the Pacific Fleet Command.
American planes
already have delivered 1,400 body bags to southern islands in
Thailand, where Interior Minister Bhokin Balakula said more than
3,500 bodies have been found. Rescue and forensic teams from
Australia, Japan, Germany, Israel and other nations fanned out
across Thailand trying to find survivors and identify rapidly
decomposing corpses.
"We have to
have hope that we'll find somebody,'' said Ulf Langemeier, head
of a German team that combed a wrecked resort with three
body-detecting dogs under huge flood lamps early Thursday.
There likely will
be up to 1,000 U.S. military personnel arriving in Thailand in
the next week, Lt. Col. Scott Elder said. The first of many Air
Force C-130 cargo planes has landed in Indonesia with blankets,
plastic sheeting and medicines.
Australian and New
Zealand military cargo planes have flown supplies and water
purification plants into Indonesia. A Pakistani navy ship has
been diverted to rescue survivors on outlying islands in the
Maldives. Singapore is sending eight helicopters, a navy ship
and more than 500 military personnel.
One bit of
encouraging news came out of the Maldives, the Indian Ocean
archipelago that is the world's lowest-lying country. Officials
believe that at an average of just three feet above sea level,
it lacked the conditions for a fall-scale tsunami to build up.
That meant casualties and damage, while considerable, were less
than in neighboring countries. Seventy-three people are
confirmed dead and 31 are missing.
The islands'
mainstay, tourism, looked likely to rebound quickly. Foreign
tourists were back in the water and resort hotel rooms were
reopening.
"My friends
and family told me to go back home. But I told them I'd be more
comfortable here than in the cold,'' said Michaela Niedermeyer,
43, of Vienna, Austria, who jumped on an inflatable mattress and
paddled to shore after her bungalow, built on stilts over the
water, was swamped by the tsunami.
12/31/04 02:16 EST
Copyright 2004
The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news
report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise
distributed without the prior written authority of The
Associated Press.
Massive
Quake, Tsunamis Kill Thousands in South Asia
(The
Event Itself)
By
ANDI DJATMIKO, AP
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia
(Dec. 28) - An earthquake of epic power struck deep beneath the
Indian Ocean on Sunday Decedmber 26th, unleashing 20-foot walls of water that
came crashing down on beaches in seven Asian countries across
thousands of miles, smashing seaside resorts and villages and
leaving thousands dead in their wake.
The 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit
at 6:58 a.m.; the tsunami came as much as 2 1/2 hours later,
without warning, on a morning of crystal blue skies. Sunbathers
and snorkelers, cars and cottages, fishing boats and even a
lighthouse were swept away. The quake was
centered 155 miles south-southeast of Banda Aceh, the capital of
Indonesia's Aceh province on Sumatra, and six miles under the
Indian Ocean's seabed. The temblor leveled dozens of buildings
on Sumatra - and was followed by at least a half-dozen powerful
aftershocks, ranging in magnitude from almost 6 to 7.3. The
waves that followed the first massive jolt were far more lethal.
Mourners in Sri Lanka
used their bare hands to dig graves Tuesday while hungry islanders
in Indonesia turned to looting in the aftermath of Asia's
devastating tsunamis.
"We had never
seen the sea looking like that. It was like as if a calm sea had
suddenly become a raging monster," said one woman, Haalima,
recalling the giant wave that swept away her 5-year-old grandson,
Adil.
Adil was making
sandcastles with his younger sister, Reeze, while Haalima sat in
her home Sunday morning. Haalima said the girl ran to her
complaining that waves had crushed their castles, then came
screams and water entered the home. "When we looked, there
was no shore anymore and no Adil," she said.
In Sri Lanka's
severely hit town of Galle, officials mounted a loudspeaker on a
fire engine to advise residents to lay bodies of the dead on roads
for collection and burial. Elsewhere in Sri Lanka, residents took
on burial efforts with forks or even bare hands to scrape a final
resting place for victims.
The tidal waves and
flooding uprooted land mines in war-torn Sri Lanka, threatening to
kill or maim aid workers and survivors who are attempting to
return to what's left of their homes.
Amid the devastation,
however, were some miraculous stories of survival.
In Malaysia, a
20-day-old baby was found alive on a floating mattress. She and
her family were later reunited. A Hong Kong couple vacationing in
Thailand clung to a mattress for six hours.
The disaster could be
history's costliest, with "many billions of dollars" of
damage, said U.N. Undersecretary Jan Egeland, who is in charge of
emergency relief coordination.
Children have emerged
as the biggest victims of Sunday's quake-born tidal waves. The
U.N. organization estimates at least one-third of the tens of
thousands who died were children, said UNICEF spokesman Alfred
Ironside in New York.
Officials in Thailand
and Indonesia conceded that immediate public warnings of gigantic
waves could have saved lives. The only known warning issued by
Thai authorities reached resort operators when it was too late.
The waves hit Sri Lanka and India more than two hours after the
quake.
But governments
insisted they couldn't have known the true danger because there is
no international system in place to track tsunamis in the Indian
Ocean, and they could not afford the sophisticated equipment to
build one.
For most people
around the shores across the region, the only warning Sunday of
the disaster came when shallow coastal waters disappeared, sucked
away by the approaching tsunami, before returning as a massive
wall of water. The waves wiped out villages, lifted cars and
boats, yanked children from the arms of parents and swept away
beachgoers, scuba divers and fishermen.
12/28/04 09:47 EST
Copyright
2004 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP
news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The
Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
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