Indonesia ramped up aid operations Sunday for victims of last week's devastating tsunami, as the toll climbed despite the discovery of 135 traumatized villagers who were feared dead.
Monsoonal storms and high seas have plagued efforts to reach disaster-struck coastal villages since they were crushed by the three-meter (10-foot) wall of water late on Monday night, after an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra.But aid chiefs said the weather had cleared early Sunday and more helicopters were on the way to ferry aid to isolated communities accessible only by sea or air.It's a clear, bright day today so we hope to be able to reach all the isolated villages," relief official Arif Rahman said."Relief distributions are running smoothly," said West Sumatra provincial disaster management head Harmensyah.
Bottled water, canned food, medicine and tents finally arrived by air Sunday to isolated Tumalei village on North Pagai island, where its 200 residents had been surviving on anything they could scavenge in the forests."We ate bananas, yam, coconuts we found in the jungle," a villager told AFP.As rescuers slowly fanned out across the worst-hit islands of North and South Pagai, the death count rose with the discovery of ever more bodies strewn on beaches or wedged under the debris.
The official toll climbed to 449, with another 96 missing."We're still looking for them... there's a high likelihood they are dead, mostly buried in sand," relief official Joskamatir said of those still unaccounted for.Many of the dead are believed to have been dragged out to sea with the receding waters or buried beneath the sand.
But in a rare piece of good news, 135 people were found alive on Saturday, hiding on high ground and too afraid of another wave to return to their shattered villages."There were also other individuals who have come to the temporary shelters alive. There were also others who returned to their villages," disaster management official Agus Prayitno said.Emergency services in Indonesia are being further stretched by the continued eruption of Mount Merapi in central Java, where some 50,000 people have been evacuated to temporary shelters.
Terrified residents fled in panic when the archipelago's most active volcano convulsed again just after midnight on Friday, threatening a repeat of explosions on Tuesday that claimed at least 36 lives.No one was killed in the latest eruption, but hospital staff reported that two people died in the chaotic rush to escape, including a woman who was hit by a truck.
Volcanic ash rained down on the Central Java provincial capital of Yogyakarta 26 kilometres (16 miles) away from the crater, shutting the airport for over an hour.Government volcanologist Subandrio said more eruptions were likely and warned evacuees not to tempt fate by going home too soon."We will even have to evaluate whether we need to widen the exclusion zone because we should not downplay the threat -- Mount Merapi is extremely dangerous," he said.Many displaced people returned to the slopes of 2,914-meter Merapi, a sacred landmark in Javanese tradition whose name means "Mountain of Fire", to tend to their livestock during the day.Extra police and troops were posted at checkpoints on roads leading into the 10-kilometer exclusion zone, and officials reported new arrivals at the shelters following Saturday's eruption."People have voluntarily chosen to stay further away as they were traumatized and wanted to avoid the danger zone," one village administrator, Suranto, told AFP.Australia and the United States have pledged aid worth a total of three million US dollars while the European Commission released 1.5 million euros (two million US dollars) for victims of both disasters.Indonesia straddles a region known as the "Pacific Ring of Fire", with scores of active volcanoes and major fault lines. Almost 170,000 Indonesians were killed in the 2004 Asian tsunami.
