BANDA ACEH, Indonesia, 30 December 2004 — A desperate fight for life was under way in Indonesia yesterday as survivors of a gigantic earthquake and tidal waves scrabbled for food among mud and corpses while the death toll shot past 36,000.
With great tracts of land still under surging ocean and no word from many isolated communities, officials warned the casualty figure would jump when contact was finally made with the area emerging as the quake’s ground zero.
Vice President Yusuf Kalla says the final toll could reach 40,000 with entire stretches of coastline wiped out by the seismic cataclysm that swept Asia and the pervading stench of death warning of imminent disease outbreaks.
With the first aid shipments arriving in Banda Aceh city, 2,000 km northwest of Jakarta, officials appealed for calm, insisting there were enough supplies, despite long queues at shops and gas stations.
Bulldozers were mobilized for grim mass burials with bodies, too bloated and disfigured for identification, unloaded from trucks and pitched without traditional Islamic ceremony into putrid mass graves.
Navy warships were finally able to reach Sumatra’s isolated northwestern shores bringing relief after three days of worrying silence from an area buried by towers of water reaching 10 meters high.
The Health Ministry said almost half an official death toll of 36,268 were from the northwest zone of Aceh province, with aerial pictures showing nothing left standing in the center of the main city Meulaboh except the main mosque.
But with aid still yet to reach many areas, policeman Supardi Bin Kasdi, who managed to escape the area and reach Banda Aceh, told AFP that survivors would have already run out of food.
“When I left them they only had enough food for one day. I told my men to try to sustain themselves by eating coconuts, but they will only last for one day. I saw residents in the area scavenging for dirty rice on the ground.”
Dr. Muhammad Andalas of the Zainal Abidin public hospital in Banda Aceh said 200 more doctors and 600 paramedics were urgently needed, as well as medicine, vitamins and body bags.
“This is extremely urgent for we can’t handle too many victims and survivors,” he said. Although government troops and separatist rebels have both called a ceasefire in Aceh because of the tragedy, the United Nations says there is no infrastructure in the war-weary province to deliver help where needed.
