Disease could double deaths
By Lely T. Djuhari
Associated Press
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Thousands of bodies lay rotting and unidentified on lawns and streets of battered Sumatra island yesterday and authorities called out bulldozers to dig mass graves, as the number killed in a mammoth earthquake and tsunami rose above 60,000 with tens of thousands still missing.
Manish Swarup • Associated Press
The U.N. health agency warned that disease could double the toll yet again.
Women and children filled an Indian military plane yesterday as victims of Sunday's tsunami were evacuated from Cambal Bat and Nicobar. About 60,000 people have been reported dead around southern Asia and as far away as Somalia on Africa's eastern coast.
Across a dozen countries, millions of people whose homes were swept away or wrecked by raging walls of water Sunday struggled to find shelter.
"My mother, no word! My sisters, brothers, aunt, uncle, grandmother, no word!" yelled a woman at a makeshift morgue in Lhokseumawe, Indonesia. "I don't know where to start looking."
Along India's southeastern coast, hospital teams stood by to help the injured, but three days after the disaster still spent most of their time tabulating the dead as ambulances hauled in more bodies. A French cultural center in Thailand's capital provided clothes and food for tourist families left with nothing after the sea battered southern resorts.
One of the most dramatic illustrations of nature's force came to light Tuesday when reporters reached the scene of a Sri Lankan train carrying beachgoers that was swept into a marsh by a wall of water Sunday, killing at least 802. Eight rust-colored cars lay in deep pools of water in a ravaged palm grove. Torn-off wheels and baggage were scattered among the twisted rails.
"Is this the fate that we had planned for? My darling, you were the only hope for me," a young man cried for one of the train victims — his university sweetheart — as Buddhist monks prayed nearby.
Indonesia's Health Ministry said in a statement early yesterday that thousands more bodies had been recovered, raising to more than 30,000 the number of confirmed deaths in parts of Sumatra island, the territory closest to the epicenter of the quake that sent tsunami waves rolling across the Indian Ocean. The count did not include a report of thousands more dead in the region around one coastal city.
"The number of victims could go as high as 40,000 because many of the regions along the western coast of Sumatra cannot be reached," said Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla.
Sri Lanka listed 21,700 people dead, India 4,491 and Thailand 1,500, with the toll expected to rise. A total of more than 300 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania, Seychelles and Kenya.
Officials had not yet counted the dead in two zones that suffered the brunt of both the earthquake and the tsunami that followed: the west coast of Sumatra and India's remote Andaman and Nicobar archipelagos just north of Sumatra.
Deddeda Stemler • Associated Press
Purnomo Sidik, national disaster director at Indonesia's Social Affairs Ministry, said 10,000 people had been reported killed in and around Meulaboh, a poor Sumatran town where most people are fishermen or workers on palm oil plantations. In India, police said 8,000 people were missing and feared dead on the two island chains.
Emergency workers remove a body from a waterfront travel agency on Phuket Island, Thailand. Thailand has reported 1,500 deaths so far.
Television footage from overflights of Meulaboh and other parts of Sumatra's west coast showed thousands of homes underwater. Refugees fleeing the coast described surviving on little more than coconuts before reaching Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province on Sumatra's northern tip, which itself was largely flattened by the quake.
With aid not arriving quickly enough, desperate people in Meulaboh and other towns in Aceh were stealing whatever food they could find, officials said.
"People are looting, but not because they are evil, but they are hungry," said Red Cross official Irman Rachmat in Banda Aceh.
Bulldozers stood ready yesterday in Banda Aceh to bury the thousands of dead bodies that littered the streets and lined the front lawns of government offices. With the threat of disease on the rise and few ways to identify the dead, officials had no choice but to start burying them in mass graves, said Col. Achmad Yani Basuki.
Aid groups struggled to mount what they described as the largest relief operation the world has ever seen, and to head off the threat of cholera and malaria epidemics that could break out where water supplies are polluted with bodies and debris.
Dr. David Nabarro, head of crisis operations for the World Health Organization, warned that disease could take as many lives as Sunday's devastation.
"The initial terror associated with the tsunamis and the earthquake itself may be dwarfed by the longer-term suffering of the affected communities," he told reporters at the U.N. agency's offices in Geneva.
The United States, Japan, Australia and other nations pledged millions of dollars to help the relief effort, and some sent military transport planes and helicopters to carry medical teams and emergency supplies.
U.S. Pacific Command in Hawai'i yesterday was marshaling approximately 15,000 sailors and Marines on planes and ships, including the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, to help with tsunami relief.
The ships of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and USS Bonhomme Richard strike group have been diverted to the region. Agence France Presse reported the Lincoln contingent left Hong Kong and was en route to the Gulf of Thailand, and the Bonhomme Richard force, an amphibious assault ship, was heading to the Bay of Bengal.
Lt. Col. Bill Bigelow, a spokesman for Pacific Command at Camp Smith, said nine P-3C Orion surveillance aircraft were being moved to Thailand and the region to assist with search operations, and six C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft were on the way with water, food and logistics equipment. Almost all the aircraft are out of Japan.
In southern Thailand's Phang Nga province, where resorts had been packed with thousands of tourists, rescuers were still finding bodies lying bloated and rotting in the tropical sun.
Survivors lined up at airports to leave the country, many without relatives or lovers they had come with.
"I saw many kids perish. I saw parents trying to hold them but it was impossible," said Karl Kalteka of Munich, Germany, who lost his girlfriend in the torrent.
"It was hell," he said.
Advertiser military writer William Cole contributed to this report.
