Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Tsunami death toll rises to 463

An Indonesian official says the country plans to speed up plans for a tsunami warning system.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published July 19, 2006

PANGANDARAN, Indonesia - Indonesia pledged to build a nationwide tsunami alert system as soldiers pulled bodies from ravaged beaches, homes and hotels Tuesday. Parents searched tearfully for their children and the death toll hit at least 463, with nearly 280 people missing.

Bodies covered in white sheets piled up at makeshift morgues, while others lay beneath the blazing sun in the tourist resort of Pangandaran, a 6-month-old baby among them.

The search for survivors continued Tuesday, with parents among the last to give up.

"The water was too strong," said one woman as she dug through a pile of rubble with her bare hands, close to the spot where she last saw her 6-year-old son. "Oh God. Eki, where are you?"

The magnitude 7.7 undersea quake on Monday triggered walls of water more than 6 feet high that crashed into a 110-mile stretch of beach on Java island. The death toll rose to at least 463, according to Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Aburizal Bakrie, and the number was expected to climb.

"We are still finding many bodies. Many are stuck in the ruins of the houses," said police Chief Syamsuddin Janieb.

Almost all the victims were Indonesians, but a Pakistani, a Swede and a Dutch citizen were among those killed, officials said.

At least 42,000 people fled their homes, either because they were destroyed or in fear of another tsunami, adding to the difficulty of counting casualties.

At the area's main hospital, in the town of Banjar, medics scrambled to treat a steady stream of patients. Some slept on dirty mattresses on the floor, while others were treated in the admissions hall.

Among the handful of foreign patients was Hamed Abukhamiss, a 40-year-old Saudi who was eating french fries with his family at a beachside cafe when the tsunami came into view on the horizon.

His 12-year-old son, Yousif, saw the wave approaching through binoculars, but no one believed him when he yelled "Tsunami!"

Less than a minute later the family was swept away in the torrent of water, and Abukhamiss' wife and 4-year-old son were killed.

"I'll bury them here, but I will never come back," he said, crying in his hospital bed. "How am I going to tell my daughter her mother is dead?"

Science and Technology Minister Kusmayanto Kadiman said Indonesia received tsunami warning bulletins 45 minutes before it hit but did not announce them because they did not want to cause unnecessary alarm.

"If it (the tsunami) did not occur, what would have happened?" he said, noting that there was no effective way to spread a warning without a system of sirens or alarms in place.

He said Indonesia now planned to speed up plans for a nationwide warning system.

Indonesia was hardest hit by a 2004 tsunami that killed at least 216,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean nations - with more than half the deaths occurring in Sumatra island's Aceh province.

Though the country started to install a warning system after that disaster, it is still in the early stages. The government had been planning to extend the alert system to Java in 2007. Until Sunday, the hotels had been filled to capacity because Indonesian schools were closed for a two-week holiday. But with schools reopening Monday, nearly everyone had checked out and many of the hotels had no guests.

Information from the Washington Post was used in this report.

[Last modified July 19, 2006, 01:18:34]