Related: South Asia Sinking Under Tsunamis
South Asian Undertow
I'll still be looking for articles in my War Daily, folks, and will bring what they give us to you.
"Landslides wipe out Indonesian villages after quake; Officials say death toll may exceed 1,300" by Irwan Firdaus and Eric Talmadge, Associated Press | October 4, 2009
Isn't that piling on? Haven't they been through enough?
Rescuers searched for survivors in the ruins of the Amacang hotel in the Sumatran city of Padang yesterday. The hotel and many other buildings were destroyed by a massive earthquake. (Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images)
PADANG, Indonesia - The death toll from Indonesia’s massive earthquake probably will double as officials yesterday reached rural communities wiped out by landslides that buried more than 600 people under mountains of mud, most of them guests at a wedding celebration.
Ooooh, the HORROR and TERROR of it all!!!!
Virtually nothing remained of four villages that had dotted the hillside of the Padang Pariman district in Indonesia’s West Sumatra just three days ago, said officials and a photojournalist who flew over the devastated area. Hundreds of doctors, nurses, search and rescue experts, and cleanup crews arrived at the regional airport from around the globe with tons of food, tents, medicine, clean water, generators, and a field hospital. But with no electricity, fuel shortages, and telecommunication outages, the massive operation was chaotic.
Not that I want to be picky, but notice how there is no criticism to the overwhelmed Indonesian government like there is when it comes to a Burmese or Chinese response?
I guess that's because the press doesn't want to make an ally look bad, huh? That's why the coverage will fade, too.
Roughly 400 people were at a communal wedding in Pulau Aiya village when Wednesday’s 7.6-magnitude quake unleashed a torrent of mud, rock, and felled palm trees, said Rustam Pakaya, the head of Indonesia’s Health Ministry crisis center. “They were sucked 100 feet deep into the earth,’’ he said. “Even the mosque’s minaret, taller than 65 feet, disappeared.’’
Good Lord!!!
I can't even imagine it from my safe perch at the bottom of my New England hill.
Twenty-six bodies were pulled from the rubble-strewn earth in nearby Lubuk Lawe and Jumena, but 618 bodies remained far beyond the reach of residents who worked without outside help because roads had been severed, he said.
The number of fatalities in the disaster will jump to more than 1,300 if all those people are confirmed dead. The government’s death toll yesterday held steady at 715, most reported in the region’s badly hit capital, Padang, where aid efforts are concentrated....
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Tens of thousands of people are believed to have been displaced. More than 1.1 million residents live in the 10 quake-hit districts, the United Nations estimated, while the government said more than 30,000 homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, and government offices had been flattened or severely damaged - 17 percent of all local infrastructure.
This is mind-boggling.
A photojournalist who flew over Padang Pariaman district in a helicopter saw several landslides. At Limo Koto Timur village, a giant section of a hillside was swept away, and the remains of houses protruded from the mud. The ruins of other tin-roofed homes hung precariously over the edge of a huge crevice that was torn through rice fields and forest. Roads were gone and palm trees had been uprooted and swept downhill, leaving patches of brown earth where villages once stood.
Yeah there is now going to be a food shortage because crops were destroyed.
El-Mostafa Benlamlih, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Indonesia, said 200 houses were swept away in Pulau Aiya. Aid efforts are “still concentrated in Padang area,’’ with outlying areas still short of aid, Benlamlih said. Aid agencies would focus on restoring water, electricity, and sanitation and preventing disease, he added. Deliveries came on C-130 cargo planes from the United States, Russia, and Australia.
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And NOTHING about SAMOA today, Globe?
