154 dead as Indonesia hit by tsunami, volcano

Monday’s 7.7-magnitude quake struck in the remote Mentawai Islands, an area popular with surfers, generating waves as high as three metres (10 feet) and sweeping away 10 villages, officials said.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch |
Source/Credit: The Express Tribune | AFP
By  AFP | Express | October 26, 2010

Volunteers carry the bodies of those who died after Mount Merapi erupted, at Kinarrejo village in Sleman, near the ancient city of Yogyakarta, October 27, 2010. PHOTO: REUTERS

JAKARTA: Indonesia struggled Wednesday to find bodies and survivors after a tsunami smashed into a remote island chain and a volcano erupted, leaving scores dead and thousands homeless in natural disasters that struck less than 24 hours apart.

An estimated 154 people were killed and over 400 remain missing, officials said Wednesday.

Entire villages were washed away and houses flattened when waves triggered by a powerful earthquake late Monday pounded an area off the west coast of Sumatra on a major fault line in a region known as the “Pacific Ring of Fire”.


“When the tsunami struck there were dozens of fishermen out at sea. Their bodies were found the next morning floating on the water or cast ashore on the beach,” said West Sumatra disaster management head Harmensyah. “We need to find the missing people as soon as possible. Some of them might have run away to the mountains, but many would have been swept away.”

Several hundred kilometres away on the central island of Java, another 25 people were killed when the country’s most active volcano, Mount Merapi, erupted on Tuesday, spewing searing clouds of gas and molten lava into the sky. Thousands of villagers have been ordered to leave the area and move to temporary shelters.

Monday’s 7.7-magnitude quake struck in the remote Mentawai Islands, an area popular with surfers, generating waves as high as three metres (10 feet) and sweeping away 10 villages, officials said. The tsunami surged as far as 600 metres inland on South Pagai island. On North Pagai island, a resort and almost 200 houses were flattened.

Medical personnel were on their way to the worst-hit areas in helicopters but rescue efforts had been hampered by disruption to communications in the islands, which are about half a day’s ferry ride away from the port of Padang on Sumatra.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has cut short a visit to Vietnam for a summit of Southeast Asian leaders because of the disasters, a diplomatic source said in Hanoi. US President Barack Obama, who lived in Indonesia as a boy and is due to return there on an Asian tour next month, voiced his sadness over the deaths and pledged US help. “As a friend of Indonesia, the United States stands ready to help in any way,” he said. Asked whether the disasters could affect Obama’s visit, a White House spokesman said: “I have not heard any expressed concern about any of those things impacting the trip.”

The massive Indonesian archipelago straddles a region where the meeting of several continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity. It has the world’s largest number of active volcanoes and is shaken by thousands of earthquakes every year. One Australian tour guide said Tuesday his boat with 15 people aboard was destroyed by a “wall of white water” crashing into a bay after the undersea quake and said some had to cling to trees to survive.

The 2,914-metre (9,616-foot) Mount Merapi, 400 kilometres east of Jakarta, is the most active of the 69 volcanoes with histories of eruptions in Indonesia. It last erupted in June 2006 killing two people, but its deadliest eruption occurred in 1930 when more than 1,300 people were killed. Heat clouds from another eruption in 1994 killed more than 60 people.


AFP




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