Indonesia tsunami toll heads for 300

By Heru Asprihanto

PANGANDARAN, Indonesia (Reuters) – The death toll rose
swiftly toward 300 on Tuesday after a strong undersea
earthquake triggered a tsunami that smashed into fishing
villages and resorts on Indonesia’s Java island.

At least four non-Indonesians were among the dead, 131
people were missing and 34,013 people were displaced, officials
said.

No warnings had been reported ahead of the waves, which
struck late Monday afternoon, despite regional efforts to
establish early warning systems after the 2004 Indian Ocean
tsunami that killed 230,000, including 170,000 in Indonesia.

But many residents and tourists recognised the signs and
fled to higher ground as the sea receded before huge waves came
crashing ashore.

“When the waves came, I heard people screaming and then I
heard something like a plane about to crash nearby and I just
ran,” Uli Sutarli, a plantation worker who was on hard-hit
Pangandaran beach, told Reuters.

The waves flung cars, motorbikes and boats into hotels and
storefronts, flattened homes and restaurants, and flooded rice
fields up to 500 metres (1,640 ft) from the sea along a stretch
of the densely populated southern Java coastline.

Officials said at least 273 people were killed.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the death toll was expected
to climb.

“In a tsunami, it is possible that the number will
increase, especially those who are missing or who have been
washed away to the sea,” he told Elshinta radio.

One of the four dead foreigners was a Dutch national,
Ciamis regency-based health department officer Yuyun Ruhiyat
told Reuters. She had no information about the other three.

Soldiers tried to retrieve bodies trapped under rubble on
Tuesday. Metro TV reported several bodies were found in trees
along Pangandaran beach near Ciamis town, 270 km (170 miles)
southeast of Jakarta.

No other country reported casualties or damage from
Monday’s tsunami.

POPULAR TOURIST SPOT

Anxious survivors lifted yellow sheets covering dozens of
bodies lining a hospital floor as they searched for relatives
in Pangandaran, which bore the brunt of the damage.

One man collapsed over the corpse of a small child, her
body streaked with mud, alongside lines of bodies under plastic
sheets in a makeshift morgue.

Some of the homeless were using floormats and sheets of
plastic to make temporary shelters on hillsides on Tuesday.
Relief agencies had yet to supply tents in the Pangandaran
area, although truckloads of aid were beginning to arrive.

Imad Roimad, a 32 year-old father of two children, told
Reuters his family was safe, but his home was smashed, adding:
“Everything is destroyed. I was a worker. Now, I’m confused. I
want to go home but I don’t know where.”

A Belgian tourist in Pangandaran, a popular spot for
surfers with many small hotels on the beach, told Reuters
Television his warning came when a waitress at a beachside bar
ran by him screaming.

“I saw this big cloud of dark sea water coming up to me. So
I grabbed the bag and started running … and then the water
grabbed me and pulled me under and I was thinking this is the
end, I’m going down.”

He said he grabbed onto a cooler and rode the wave into a
nearby hotel.

The U.S. Geological Survey rated the undersea quake’s
magnitude at 7.7. with its epicentre about 180 kms off the
hardest hit spot on Java’s southern coast.

The U.S.-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the
quake would not trigger “a destructive widespread tsunami
threat,” but could cause some local tsunamis.

No tsunami warning system has been set up for the southern
coast of Java. An Indonesian warning system was supposed to be
up and running by now after the 2004 tsunami, the worst on
record, but it has stalled.

Asked how many tsunami buoys Indonesia has in operation
since it launched a first stage of its warning system off the
coast of Aceh in northern Sumatra last year, a government
official assigned to the project said: “none.”

Indonesia’s 17,000 islands sprawl along a belt of intense
volcanic and seismic activity, part of what is called the
“Pacific Ring of Fire.”

Earthquakes are frequent in Indonesia. In May, one near the
city of Yogyakarta in central Java killed more than 5,700.

(Additional reporting by Achmad Sukarsono, Diyan Jari and
Muhamad Ari in Jakarta)