Tsunami victims given mass burial

Tsunami victims given mass burial

Rumours of another killer wave sparked mass panic today in the town hardest hit by the Indonesian tsunami, while the death toll rose to 531, with more than 270 missing.

More than 1,000 residents of the beach resort of Pangandaran ran, bicycled or drove inland amid shouts of: "The water is coming!"

"People suddenly started running so I joined them," said Marino, 42.

It was unclear how the rumour started. Indonesia has no nationwide tsunami warning system and coastal residents had no notice of the onrushing wave on Monday.



Amateur video aired today on Metro TV showed children playing in the surf and building sandcastles, followed by brief shots of a wall of black water bearing down on Pangandaran beach on Java island’s south coast. The camera operator runs away amid the sound of screaming.

The region has been rattled by aftershocks.

A strong quake today off Java's coast - just hours after the panic in Pangandaran - caused buildings in the capital, Jakarta, to sway for more than a minute.

There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

The tsunami, triggered by a magnitude 7.7 undersea earthquake, smashed into a 110-mile stretch of Java's coastline, which was unaffected by the devastating 2004 Asian tsunami.

Waves more than 2 metres high reached 200 metres inland in some places, destroying scores of houses, restaurants and hotels.

Cars, motorbikes and boats were left mangled amid fishing nets, furniture and other debris.

Ambulances with sirens blaring brought bodies to a cemetery in Pangandaran for a mass burial as hundreds of spectators looked on. As darkness fell, 24 unidentified corpses were tagged with numbers and laid in the ground, five children among them.

Today's quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.1.

Suharjono, head of the earthquake division at Jakarta's meteorological agency, told Metro TV that the tumbler was not strong enough to trigger a tsunami, but he urged people to be on guard.

Police and army teams with sniffer dogs and mechanical equipment kept searching for survivors of the tsunami, but found only bodies amid the ruins, pushing the death toll to 531, said Maman Susanto, from the government’s national disaster co-ordinating board. Several foreign tourists were among the dead.

He said 275 people were listed as missing.

At the area's main hospital, in the town of Banjar, medics treated a steady stream of patients, most from the Pangandaran coast. Some slept on dirty mattresses on the floor, while others were treated in the admissions hall.

Surgeons amputated the left leg of a women who was trapped under the rubble of her house.

"I thought I was going do die, but God gave me mercy so I can carry on with my life," Tintin Rotiyani said from her hospital bed.

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre and Japan's Meteorological Agency issued warnings of a possible tsunami about 15 minutes after Monday’s quake. The tsunami struck Java about 45 minutes later - before authorities had time to warn anyone on the coast.

Science and Technology Minister Kusmayanto Kadiman said Tuesday the government received both regional tsunami bulletins, but did not try to announce the warnings.

He appeared to back away from those comments today, telling el-Shinta radio that the government's meteorological agency sent text messages to at least 400 officials and one of his staffers appeared on national television to warn of the tsunami.

But Kadiman did not say whether the actions were taken before the tsunami hit, or whether the 400 officials lived on the threatened coastline.

Moreover, with no warning sirens or alarms on the beaches, getting the message to significant numbers of residents and tourists would likely have been impossible.

The quake was not felt by most people on the beaches. The first most people knew of the wave was when they heard screams of "Tsunami! Tsunami!"

Indonesia was the nation hardest hit by a 2004 tsunami that killed at least 216,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean nations - with more than half the deaths in Sumatra island’s Aceh province.

The country started to install a warning system after that disaster and had been planning to extend it to Java in 2007.