Indonesia tsunami toll crosses 340, hundreds missing

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 more than 200
people are missing, officials said on Tuesday.

More than 54,000 people have been displaced, they said.

No warnings had been reported ahead of the waves, which
struck on Monday, 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
recognized 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 meters (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. At least four non-Indonesians
were among the dead.

One was a Dutch national, health department officer Yuyun
Ruhiyat said. 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.

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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 mortuary.

Dozens of people searched for lost relatives in
Pangandaran’s hospitals, which were packed with injured people.

“I was with my daughter in my house by the beach. I was
preparing to leave the house when I saw the water had receded,”
Yati Maryati, whose daughter was swept away by the wave.

“But I couldn’t hold on to my daughter when the wave
suddenly struck and swept away my house. There’s still no news
of her,” she cried, sitting in a hospital bed with bruises and
bandages all over her body.

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.

The U.S. Geological Survey rated the undersea quake’s
magnitude at 7.7. with its epicenter about 180 km (110 miles)
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 the 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.”

“We need at least 22 buoys to cover all of Indonesia. We
have received two from Germany and they were deployed months
ago. However, both of them are damaged now,” he said.

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 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 and Crack Palinggi)