MENTAWAI ISLANDS, Indonesia — Rescuers searching islands ravaged by a tsunami off western Indonesia raised the death toll to 393 today as more corpses were wrapped in body bags or buried by neighbors. Officials said hundreds of missing people may have been swept out to sea.
Elsewhere in Indonesia, the volcano that killed 34people this week began erupting again. After a lull that allowed mourners tohold a mass burial for victims, Mount Merapi started rumbling again Thursday with three small eruptions and another one early today. There were no reports of new injuries or damage.
The twin catastrophes struck within 24 hours in different corners of the seismically charged region, severely testing the nation’s emergency response network.
Islanders dug graves and slung up tarps to sleep under in one of the areas hardest hit by a 10-foot wave that swept houses off their foundations and deposited the shattered remains in the jungle. Many residents who fled to the hills were refusing to return home for fear the sea might lash out again.
As many as 4,000 villagers were homeless and staying at temporary shelters or had sought refuge on higher ground, said Bambang Suharjo, an official at the provincial Disaster Management Agency. Other officials put the number of displaced residents at as many as 16,000.
Officials said a multimillion-dollar warning system installed after a monster 2004 quake and tsunami broke down one month ago because it was not being properly maintained. A German official at the project disputed that, saying the system was working but the quake’s epicenter was too close to the Mentawai islands for residents to get the warning before the killer wave hit.
Search and rescue teams - kept away for days by stormy seas and bad weather - found roads and beaches with swollen corpses lying on them, according to Harmensyah, head of the West Sumatra provincial disaster management center. Harmensyah, like many Indonesians, goes by only one name.
Some of the searchers wore face masks as they wrapped corpses in black body bags on Pagai Utara, one of the four main islands in the Mentawai chain located between Sumatra and the Indian Ocean.
Also Thursday, aid was slowly reaching the islands with the help of military ships and aircraft, and Suharjo said more food and other aid was expected. “More assistance is on its way. But to reach there will take some time.”
Other officials explained that reaching the quake-ravaged islands by ferry would take up to 10 hours from the provincial capital of Padang.
Nelis Zuliasri, a spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency, said some aid from Jakarta arrived at around midnight Wednesday.
However, about 2,400 displaced people in the Pagai Selatan district had not received any assistance, she said, because of difficult road access to the area.
A shortage of fuel also had prevented vehicles from distributing aid, she added.
“The field is very difficult because it consists of small islands located in the open sea,” said Social Affairs Mister Segaf Al Jufri, who accompanied Vice President Boediono visiting Pagai Selatan.
Medical supplies at the public-health centers were running low, Mentawai disaster relief agency official Joskamtir was quoted as saying by the state-run Antara news agency.
“We also desperately need hundreds more body bags, face masks for the survivors because the stench began to sting, especially at night,” he said. More bodies had been discovered, but rescue workers did not have enough body bags, and he said he feared the onset of diseases.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono flew by helicopter to the Mentawais to inspect the aid effort. He had cut short a visit to Vietnam and skipped a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders that began Thursday.
HUNDREDS MISSING
Officials raised the death toll today to 393, up from 370 Thursday night. Agus Zaenal of the West Sumatra provincial disaster management agency had said Thursday night that 338 people were still missing.
Harmensyah said the teams were losing hope of finding those missing since the wall of water, triggered by a 7.7-magnitude earthquake, crashed into the islands on Monday.
“They believe many, many of the bodies were swept to sea,” he said.
In a rare bright spot, an 18-month-old baby was found alive in a clump of trees on Pagai Selatan island on Wednesday. Relief coordinator Hermansyah said a 10-year-old boy found the toddler, both of whose parents were dead.
On Pagai Seatandug island, the wave deposited giant chunks of coral and rocks the size of people into the places where homes once stood in Pro Rogat village, one of the hardest-hit areas with 65 dead. Villagers huddled under tarps in the rain and talked about how many who had fled to the hills were too afraid to return home.
Mud and palm fronds covered the body of the village’s pastor, 60-year-old Simorangkir. His corpse lay on the ground, partially zipped into a body bag. Police and relatives took turns pushing a shovel through the sodden dirt next to him to create his final resting place.
His grandson, Rio, 28, traveled by boat to Pro Rogat from his home on a nearby island to check on his relatives after the quake. He said he was picking through the wreckage when someone cried out that he had found a body. Rio walked over and saw his grandfather’s corpse partially buried under several toppled palm trees.
“Everybody here is so sad,” Rio said, as family members prepared to place his grandfather in the grave.
On nearby Pagai Utara island, more than 100 survivors crowded into a makeshift medical center in the main town of Sikakap. Some still wept for lost loved ones as they lay on straw mats or sat on the floor, waiting for medics to treat injuries including broken limbs and cuts.
Fisherman Joni Sageru, 30, recalled being jolted awakeby the quake and running outside to hear screams to run to higher ground on his island of Pagai Selaton.
“First, we saw seawater recede far away, then when it returned, it was like a big wall running toward our village,” Sageru said. “Suddenly trees, houses and all things in the village were sucked into the sea and nothing was left.”
Officials questioned whether the tsunami warning system had functioned properly. The chief of Indonesia’s Meteorology and Geophysic Agency, Fauzi, said the special buoys that detect sudden changes in water level broke down last month because of inexperienced operators and poor maintenance.
However, Joern Lauterjung, head of the German-Indonesia Tsunami Early Warning Project for the Potsdam-based GeoForschungs Zentrum, said a warning did go out five minutes after the quake - but the tsunami hit so fast no one was warned in time.
“The early warning system worked very well - it can be verified,” he said.
He added that only one sensor of 300 had not been working, and had no effect on the system’s operation.
VOLCANO RE-ERUPTS
About 800 miles to the east of the tsunami zone, Mount Merapi in central Java spewed hot clouds of ash again around 6:10 a.m. today, according to the Indonesian volcanology agency Subandriyo.
Nearly 40,000 villagers who had fled plumes of hot ash were being asked to stay in temporary shelters while seismologists tried to determine whether the fresh eruptions meant that further destruction was on the way.
But about 50 sand miners in Rahayu village on the eastern slope of the volcano returned to work despite the warnings.
“We didn’t work for two days,” said Sugiyem, a 60-year-old woman who said she had been a sand miner for 30 years. “If we stop working, we won’t be able to eat.”
“This is the only job we have,” she said.
The National Disaster Management Agency said in a statement that the death toll from Tuesday’s eruption had risen to 34 with 30 injured and two missing.
Residents from the hardest-hit villages of Kinahrejo, Ngrangkah, and Kaliadem crammed into refugee camps. Officials brought surviving cows, buffalo and goats down the mountain so that villagers wouldn’t try to go home to check on their livestock.
Thousands attended a mass burial for 26 of the victims six miles from the mountain’s base.
Among the dead was the keeper of Mount Merapi - an 83-year-old man entrusted to watch over the volcano’s spirits, believing it could be appeased by tossing offerings of rice, chickens and flowers into the gaping crater.
And when the eruption came, Maridjan was among those who died, along with dozens of villagers who believed him, not seismologists or government officials, about the danger.
His rigid body was found Wednesday, prostrate in the Islamic prayer position and caked in heavy white soot. Nearby was an Indonesian Red Cross volunteer who had been trying to persuade him to leave.
“Maridjan was very conscientious in performing his duties. But because he was a role model, many other victims died when the explosion happened because they still stayed in the village,” said his brother, Wignyo Suprapto.
“They thought that everything would be safe because Maridjan did not leave.”
Some Indonesian newspapers have reported that he felt he had to stay to use his powers to keep the damage to a minimum.
A separate funeral for Maridjan on Thursday was attended by hundreds.
The 8,904-foot-tall Mount Merapi, located about 300 miles southeast of Jakarta, last erupted in 2006, killing two people.
Indonesia has the highest density of volcanoes in the world with about 500 in the 3,000-mile-long archipelago nation. Nearly 130 are active, and 68 are listed as dangerous.
Information for this article was contributed by Kristen Gelineau, Achmad Ibrahim, Slamet Riyadi, Andi Jatmiko, Elisabeth Oktofani and Irwan Firdaus of The Associated Press; by Sukino Harisumarto and Ahmad Pathoni of McClatchy Newspapers; and by Aubrey Belford of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/29/2010