NAGAPATTINAM, India, 30 December 2004 — Relief workers raced yesterday to bury decaying corpses amid fears of disease as the death toll in India from towering tidal waves kept rising.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described the disaster as a “national calamity” after visiting a round-the-clock control room in the capital, New Delhi, set up to coordinate relief operations.
The biggest question hung over the fate of people in the far-flung Andaman and Nicobar islands which lie near the epicenter of the Indonesian quake Sunday that sent waves crashing across the seas.
Six large aftershocks yesterday jolted the islands which were home to many tribes already threatened by extinction.
Relief workers said they feared epidemics in the tropical heat as bloated bodies lay scattered on beaches and tides brought in more. Corpses continued to be piled up in makeshift morgues. Amidst the tales of disaster were occasional stories of miracle escapes.
A two-year-old child was found alive beside the body of her mother in a graveyard near Periyavila village in Tamil Nadu, three days after she was believed to have been swallowed by the waves.
The child was taken to hospital where she was being nursed back to health by doctors, officials said, The Press Trust of India reported.
But mostly there were scenes of despair as survivors grieved over lost family members.
In Nagapattinam district where officials said the death toll would mount, the cloying smell of death hung heavy in the air. Survivors thronged a church in Valainkani to seek comfort.
“Oh God! Why have you taken my son away? Oh God, bless my son,” wailed a woman in the village’s majestic seaside church that escaped the killer waves.
People searching for their loved ones in Valainkani thronged notice boards pasted with color photographs of about 400 unclaimed bodies. At least 150 of them were children. Many were infants who appeared not dead, but deep in sleep.
Aid groups say up to a third of the dead could be children as they were least able to hold onto trees or other objects when the waves hit.
Masked grave diggers worked at whirring speed, heaping bodies into mass graves with no ceremony amid flattened coconut palms and wreckage of flimsy fishermen’s shacks. Others helped pile up wood for mass cremations.
In parts of the mainland, workers gave up keeping records of the dead in the rush to dispose of decomposing corpses. “It’s not possible (to keep track),” one gravedigger said on television.
Tens of thousands spent another night huddled in emergency shelters, temples, churches and government buildings. The government and aid agencies say at least 160,000 people have been left homeless in southern India.
While the army has been pressed into relief work, there was anger in some areas about the slowness of aid. In at least two villages, angry locals briefly blocked the entry of rescue workers, saying they should have arrived faster.
However, in New Delhi, a government official said India had turned down foreign aid from countries like the United States, Israel, Russia and Japan as it had “adequate resources” to provide relief.
The United Nations has warned disease could kill as many people as the tsunami unless aid reaches afflicted regions within weeks.
Aid workers were concerned about the threat of diarrheal illnesses due to contaminated water as well as mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever and malaria.
“Getting clean water to people in camps is critical at this point to head off spread of disease,” said UNICEF water and sanitation chief Lizette Burgers.
Rescuers yesterday headed to the last of India’s remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, areas largely untouched by the modern world, where survivors have been living on coconuts since Sunday.
Islanders terrified an endless series of strong aftershocks could trigger more giant waves are camping on high ground or sleeping on mattresses in the streets of the capital, Port Blair. There has been little contact with most of the islands.
“The situation in some of the islands we managed to establish contact with is indeed very, very grim,” territory police chief S.B. Deol told reporters.
“People have been living on coconuts for the past 60 hours and the coconuts are not going to last forever. We need to reach food urgently to these people.”
“One in every five inhabitants in the entire Nicobar group of islands is either dead, injured or missing.” At least 50,000 people live in the Nicobars, but no one really knows for sure.
Dozens of aftershocks above 5.0 magnitude have continued to rock the islands, near the epicenter of the 9.0-magnitude earthquake.
One tremor yesterday registered 6.1. Military planes and helicopters airdropping food, water and medicine to the island of Katchal have accounted for only half its estimated 5,000 residents. On nearby Teressa, aircraft have spotted only 500 of the mainly flat island’s 1,500 inhabitants.
A shortage of boats and aircraft has hampered rescue operations in the islands, once a place of imprisonment for political dissidents during British rule in India and a haven for smugglers even today. India maintains a strong military presence.
