My Life and Times

January 2, 2005THE RELIEF
From Heart of Indonesia's Disaster, a Cry for HelpBy JANE PERLEZ
MEULABOH, Indonesia, Jan. 1 - A dozen towns that once thrived near here are gone. Some 10,000 people have been buried, local officials say, and the effort to collect bodies cannot keep up.
For seven days, the scale of the natural disaster that swallowed coastlines in southern Asia last Sunday has slowly unfolded, with death tolls doubling almost daily. But Meulaboh, just 90 miles from the earthquake's epicenter, remained almost beyond description since no one could get here and the destruction could be only imagined.
On Saturday, the president of Indonesia flew in briefly and the examination finally began. It is a picture of grief and devastation beyond that of any other in the dozen countries hit. Apart from a few sturdy mosques and buildings, there is simply nothing left under the mountains of black mud and debris. The people the president met wept as they spoke.
One man, Roosli, 52, sat near the entrance of one of the town's remaining buildings, nursing his naked 2-year-old son Bendi, who was the sole surviving child of eight children in the family. "When the water came I got out of my house and I ran in panic," said Mr. Roosli, a street trader. "I have zero left. I lost seven children. What do I need? Everything. Help us, please." Proffering a red plastic cup, he said a cup of rice was issued to all the homeless each day.
After his convoy snaked through streets of crumpled buildings, the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, admitted that assistance was slow in coming to Meulaboh and other areas in tremendous need, and asked the world for help. In Indonesia alone, at least 100,000 people have died, most here in Aceh Province, the government estimates, making Indonesia the worst sufferer from the quake and tsunamis.
"I appeal to the world community to contribute to the reconstruction of Indonesia that has been hit by disaster and we welcome those contributions as a manifestation of global unity," Mr. Yudhoyono said at a news conference in the modest but unscathed military headquarters here.
He acknowledged that his government had been slow in organizing and dispatching aid. Bloated bodies remain uncollected in the city of Banda Aceh, and there was no sign of any ability to clear the huge amounts of debris and black mud in this isolated town.
"I know there are problems on the ground, and I know we have had some shortcomings," he said. He promised that the government would try to improve. Decomposed bodies still lie amid wet rubble on the streets of Banda Aceh, the provincial capital that is 125 miles away from Meulaboh, at the northern tip of Sumatra island. The lieutenant governor of Aceh Province, Abu Bakar, said Saturday that 10,000 people had been buried so far, but that it would be another month before all the bodies could be cleared away.
Here in Meulaboh, the shock of last Sunday was still so strong that the military commander, a Colonel Geerhan, wept as he showed Mr. Yudhoyono a video of the townspeople as they ran from the tidal wave to higher ground.
In the video, groups of people were seen walking, then running away from the shore. In one frame a man and his small children grabbed the back door of an ambulance, opened it and clamored inside to get a ride away from the water. One of Colonel Geerhan's soldiers explained Saturday that the ambulance was missing and presumed to have been dragged out to sea.
In describing the hours of hell last Sunday, Colonel Geerhan said he was preparing to exercise at about 7:45 a.m. when he felt an earthquake. He said he checked on his men at the military headquarters and then went to help dig people out of collapsed buildings. He said the first wave of water came about 15 minutes later, although others said the first wave of water came later, about half an hour to 45 minutes after the earthquake.
"We used ambulances with sirens to mobilize people to go to higher ground," Colonel Geerhan said. "That's when the second wave came, and I found myself next to a 16-foot-by-6-foot fishing boat that had been swept in by the sea. That's when I felt a little bit afraid."
Each wave was about 15 minutes apart, he said. Within three hours after the last wave, he said, the military had collected nearly 40 bodies. By Saturday, they had buried 4,000, he said.
The first American military helicopters pledged by the Bush administration as a key part of the American aid package arrived at the Banda Aceh airport on Saturday and made some deliveries, said Alwi Shihab, the minister for social services. American pledges of aid have risen sharply this week, in the face of local criticism that Washington had done too little to help.
Many Indonesians compare the earthquake disaster to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, but note that the death toll here is far greater. Other nations, including Singapore and Australia to the south, got helicopters and medical assistance into Indonesia earlier than the United States.
A combination of shock, reluctance by the government to come to grips with the extent of the calamity, and the nature of the disaster appear to have delayed the efforts to help those devastated by the earthquake.
A decision was made Friday that the bodies could not be burned because it would violate the tenets of Islam, Mr. Shihab said. "We don't want to offend the deeply held beliefs of the Acehenese," he said. Instead, religious leaders have said bodies could be buried where they were found rather than being taken to a designated grave, which is the custom for Muslims.
The biggest challenge in Meulaboh appeared to be the removal of mountains of rubble and the reconstruction of destroyed homes and shops. But Maj. Gen. Judi Jusuf said Saturday that the military was stymied on how best to go about it.
Five Indonesian naval vessels arrived Saturday and were anchored offshore with 600 soldiers and some heavy equipment to begin clearing the mess. But the ships could not unload the equipment because the beaches in town had been washed away, the general said. It would also be difficult to bring heavy earth-moving equipment over land because the only existing road into the town was from the south and was too narrow and mountainous. The road to the north connecting Meulaboh to Banda Aceh had hugged the coast and was totally washed away, he said.
Along that coast from Meulaboh, 12 towns were washed away by the waves. On Saturday, as Mr. Yudhoyono flew over in a helicopter, there was no sign of life, not even of debris. The sea had apparently washed over the land with such ferocity and then fallen back with such pull that it swept everything with it.
Those few who had survived walked out to Banda Aceh. On Thursday, a correspondent for Netherlands Television, Step Vaessen, said she drove for an hour out of Banda Aceh and met a family who had walked since Sunday. "They were completely exhausted, they had had nothing to drink," she said. "Others said they had walked for three days."
In Banda Aceh, morale was low because earthquake tremors frightened survivors, said Azwar Hassan, who works in Jakarta as a community development specialist and came back to his home to find his family. Much of his family was intact, except for two missing cousins.
"Everybody wants to run away," he said. "They are just praying and praying and praying."
But most disturbing, he said, was the feeling among the survivors of not knowing what to do. "The military is just looking after the dead bodies," he said. Instead, Mr. Hassan said, more should be done for the living. "It's very hard for people to find help," he said.
He tried to get his family rice, the favored food here. He was disappointed, he said, that when he found an open store, stockpiles of rice from the military storehouse were being sold for the equivalent of $6 a bag, a huge markup on the usual price.
Mr. Shihab, like the president, acknowledged that there were huge problems.
"Government is almost dysfunctional, administration is almost in a void," he said of what remains in the province of Aceh. "Even if there are personnel, they are dispirited. We don't have air transportation to move in replacements. Most people are depressed. People say, 'Where is the army? Where are the police?' They are depressed. They can't be replaced in one or two days."
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