BANDA ACEH, Indonesia – Airborne military patrols scoured inaccessible sections of Sumatra island Thursday and found that swaths of land were inundated and roads, villages and bridges had vanished. After helicopter flyovers, rescuers estimated more than 80,000 deaths in the region and described the scene as catastrophic.
“The scale of devastation is huge, bigger than imagined,” said Emil Agustiono, a government official helping coordinate the Aceh relief effort.
In Meulaboh, 110 miles southeast of this provincial capital in northern Sumatra, rescuers reported that lagoons had formed where communities had disappeared. Officials expressed fears that 40,000 of the 120,000 residents could have died in Meulaboh and the area around it. The district is about 60 miles from the epicenter of Sunday’s undersea earthquake, which registered a magnitude of 9.0 and generated a massive tsunami that killed at least 119,000 people in 12 countries in South Asia and Africa.
The force of the tsunami swept the sea to the foot of mountains more than a mile inland, according to a reporter for the Reuters news agency who surveyed the area. Mangled cars littered streets, and fishing boats were strewn on top of other debris, but the city’s maroon-domed mosque remained standing, the reporter said.
As governments of the 12 countries struggled to restore basic needs – potable water, medicines and food for millions affected by the disaster – relief operations were spurred on around the world. But the poorest survivors still wandered aimlessly amid rubble looking to bury their dead, or waited for food that had not arrived. The World Health Organization reported that “between three and five million people in the region are unable to access the basic requirements they need to stay alive – clean water, adequate shelter, food, sanitation and healthcare.”
The first survivors were airlifted Thursday from Meulaboh to Banda Aceh. One woman, Epayani, 31, said the tsunami surged over the town moments after the earth tremors stopped. “I heard the sound of the wave,” said Epayani, who uses only one name. “It was very loud. Imagine hearing the sound of a volcano erupting.”
In Banda Aceh, corpses lay along the muddy streets, and the military could not meet a deadline for clearing them away that had been imposed by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono after touring the area Tuesday.
The Indian government issued an erroneous tsunami warning Thursday, and people fled the southern Indian coast on jammed roads and climbed roofs in coastal areas of Sri Lanka and Thailand. Hours later, the government said the alert was a false alarm. There is no coordinated tsunami warning system in the region.
Periodic aftershocks from the Sunday quake were registered in South Asia on Thursday. Lava was spewing from a volcano on an island in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an Indian archipelago off the coasts of Burma and Indonesia, officials told news agencies. Previously, the crater emitted only gas.
Four days after one of the largest earthquakes in history triggered a tsunami that smashed into coastlines from Indonesia to Somalia, half a billion dollars has been pledged to the relief effort, the United Nations said.
The Indonesian Health Ministry reported that it expected further increases in the death toll. Sri Lanka reported 27,268 dead and about 1 million people displaced; India, at least 7,368 deaths, with 8,000 missing and possibly dead in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands; Thailand, 4,500 dead; Somalia, 114; Burma, also known as Myanmar, 65; Malaysia, 65; Maldives, 69; Tanzania, 10; Bangladesh, two; and Kenya, one.
European nations have pledged millions in aid to South Asia relief. Britain said it was donating $95 million; Sweden promised $75.5million; Spain, $68 million; and France, $57 million. Aside from the military commitment, the United States has announced an initial $35 million aid package. The largest single donation so far has been $250 million from the World Bank, announced Thursday by the organization’s president, James Wolfensohn.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said the donations have been generous but the need is vast.
“This is an unprecedented global catastrophe, and it requires an unprecedented global response,” Annan said.
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