Aceh survivors face new battles
By Dean Yates And Tomi Soetjipto in Banda Aceh
02jan05

SURVIVORS huddle in clearings without food or shelter above the water-damage line all along the tsunami-ravaged coast of Indonesia's Aceh province, and corpses float for kilometres out to sea.

A week after giant waves swamped parts of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra island, the water is only just beginning to drain off to reveal the full extent of the horrific destruction and yet more bodies to count.

"I've never seen anything like this. We've seen bodies 20 miles (32km) out to sea. You just cannot describe it," said Captain Larry Burt, commander of a helicopter air wing on the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln parked off the Sumatran coast.

"Above the water line, there are people standing there waving flags trying to signal us. There are so many, you just can't stop for all of them," he told Reuters after a mission down the west coast, which bore the brunt of the December 26 quake and tsunami.

Walking the streets of Banda Aceh today, local clean-up crews and exhausted soldiers find it hard to know where to start, their efforts hampered by a steady drizzle.

Fires burn around the clock to clear areas around Banda Aceh's main parade ground of wooden debris. The soggy ground, about the size of five football fields, is stacked with rubbish, smashed vehicles and badly decomposed bodies.

As water drains from many districts of this city of more than 300,000 people, a nightmarish landscape of sludge, flattened homes and tangled corpses is exposed. The stench is overpowering.

"We need so much help," said Hayaddin, 51, a street vendor. "People say more waves will come."

Again during the long night, aftershocks from the massive quake that triggered the killer wall of water could be felt, sending panicked residents fleeing into the streets.

Zurhan, 23, a bulldozer driver, wearing a woollen jumper over his head to filter out some of the smell of death, stood in the middle of the parade ground shaking his head.

"It is so difficult to clean the ground. Everything is mixed together. I can't count how many bodies I have seen here. Look at the garbage. I'm sure there are many more there," he said.

As many as 30,000, of the roughly 80,000 Acehnese known to have died, perished in this city when the waves, triggered by the world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years, swept through.

With most of the population suffering severe trauma, half a dozen mechanical excavators sat idle on the backs of trucks, authorities unable to find drivers for them.

Substantial help has finally begun reaching refugees in some of the more remote parts of Aceh and the US military has arrived in force, parking a flotilla of ships off the coast.

Hundreds of survivors gathered at Banda Aceh's airport to watch US Sea Hawk helicopters, Singaporean military Super Puma choppers and Australian and Indonesian Hercules transport planes.

"This is an enormous human tragedy. The biggest problem right now is water ... It's poisoned," Jorgen Poulsen, chief of the Danish Red Cross, said at a distribution centre for noodles and cooking oil outside what was the city's trendiest shopping centre.

"We hope we can avoid cholera. The problem is we have already seen people vomiting in town."

Indonesian soldiers in rubber boats, armed with black plastic sheets, prepared to remove bodies clogging a canal.

Many people are afraid of returning to their neighbourhoods and cluster in makeshift refugee camps, where desperate survivors use megaphones to find relatives.

"It's been a week and I still don't want to go home because my area is still rank with the smell of dead bodies," said tailor M Yunus, 45.

Others said they had received some food aid, but distribution was chaotic.

Yet amid all the destruction were glimmers of hope. In a part of Banda Aceh less affected by the tsunami a market had opened, although food prices had doubled.

"At least here is better than being up on the hills," said Maimunah, the wife of a retired fire department official cooking noodles for her family at one camp of about 2000 refugees.

And local media reported 10 foreign tourists from Britain, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands and Switzerland were found alive on a small island about 25km off the Aceh coast.

Source: http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,11836228%255E401,00.html