BREAKING NEWS
Toll mounts in search for Indonesia tsunami dead
Pangandaran, Indonesia (dpa) - Indonesian rescue workers feared Tuesday
the death toll from an earthquake-triggered tsunami could top 300 as
soldiers and volunteers continued sifting through shattered buildings,
homes and other debris for survivors and bodies.
At least 262 people have been confirmed dead and nearly 30,000
displaced from Indonesia's second major tsunami in 18 months, officials
and local reports said.
The idyllic West Java beach area of Pangandaran was littered with
fishing boats, automobiles, chunks of wood, concrete and other debris
from waves as high as 4 metres that crashed ashore on Monday afternoon.
Dozens of people continued to seek medical treatment Tuesday as
rescuers carried on their search for dozens more who remained
unaccounted for.
The US Geological Survey measured the quake at 7.7 magnitude on the
Richter scale, occurring at 3:20 p.m. (0820 GMT) in western and central
Java. It prompted the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre to issue an alert
in the Indian Ocean for Indonesia's Java and Sumatra islands and
Australia's Christmas and Cococs islands.
Indra Yogasera, a spokesman at the Indonesian Red Cross Society, said
that 155 people were confirmed dead but the number "will go much
higher" as the bodies of missing people are recovered.
The Jakarta Post electronic edition quoted rescue officials at the site
as having confirmed 262 dead by mid-morning Tuesday.
The Red Cross said more than 28,000 people were displaced, either being
unable to return to their damaged homes or refusing amid fear of
another tsunami.
The disaster proved to be worse than officials initially suspected on
Monday afternoon, with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono telling
reporters that only five people had died.
The tsunami waves, initially reported at 2 metres, actually rose to at
least 4 metres when they hit the west Java coast, witnesses said.
Pangandaran, a popular beach resort town, was the worst hit area, with
several beachfront hotels and houses destroyed and a least one building
washed away.
"It (the disaster) began with a small tremor and some people probably
didn't feel it," said Mamat, a local resident who was standing only 100
metres from the beach.
"Several minutes later waves up to 4 metres came in at high speed and
crashed ashore," he said. "There were several cars and boats swept away
by seawater until they crashed into a hotel."
The government's disaster command centre at Pangandaran beach said
bodies were discovered in 10 different coastal areas in the district.
Meanwhile, more than 450 Indonesian army soldiers and hundreds of
volunteers continued to scour remote villages along Java's southwest
coastline in hopes of finding survivors.
Monday's disaster was a tragic though less-devastating flashback to the
December 2004 Asian tsunami that killed more than 220,000 people in
nine countries, including some 177,000 alone in Indonesia's Aceh
province.
The government deployed offshore tsunami early warning buoys last year
to protect Aceh and north Sumatra, but the system is not scheduled to
be expanded to cover Java until next year.
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