Indonesia tsunami toll rises to 340

By Heru Asprihanto

PANGANDARAN, Indonesia (Reuters) – The death toll from a
tsunami that smashed into fishing villages and resorts on
Indonesia’s Java island has crossed 340, and over 200 more
people are missing, officials said on Tuesday.

At least four non-Indonesians were among the dead and more
than 54,000 people were displaced, they said.

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

But many residents and tourists on the southern Java coast
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 (550 yards) from the sea along a
stretch of the densely populated coastline.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the death toll had reached
341 and another 229 were missing.

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.

“People have started returning to their houses, although
most of them are still staying on higher ground,” said
Pangandaran disaster center officer Dwi Hasyim Ashari.

“We are sheltering people who lost their houses in schools,
mosques, and also in tents. We have built a large tent in a
football field.”

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 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 km off the
hardest hit spot on Java’s southern coast.

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,
Muklis Ali and Muhamad Ari in Jakarta)