Survivors of the tsunami in the battered Indonesian province of Aceh expressed frustration with the slowness of aid efforts as emergency workers struggled with a logistical nightmare.
In the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, rotting bodies and piles of debris continued to clutter the streets, with the local government in disarray. Officials were burying dead bodies by the truckload, but they lacked the manpower to dig them all out and transport them to mass graves.
Sunday’s earthquake and the resulting tsunami struck the province of Aceh the hardest of all areas around the Indian Ocean. Aceh, a province in northern Sumatra, has a population of around 5-million. It lay closest to the epicentre of the quake.
The Indonesian health minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, said the death toll in Aceh was likely to rise above 100 000. The number of confirmed dead is 79 940.
”It will take at least two weeks for us to have the people and equipment we need here,” Aigor Lacomba, of a consortium of European aid groups, told the Reuters news agency. ”It means nothing to bring a whole lot of staff if you have no where for them to live.”
There were few indications of coordinated aid distribution in Banda Aceh and its suburbs. Handwritten signs stuck everywhere on poles and fences said: ”Please help. Give us aid.”
Eddy, 50, a teacher whose school was destroyed in the tsunami, complained that people with little or no money left had to pay for fuel.
”Why do we have to pay? It should be free after this disaster. What is wrong with the government?” he said.
At one of the only two open gas stations cars backed up for more than a mile, watched by police with automatic weapons. Hundreds of people stood in queues carrying jerry cans.
”It’s taking too long to get petrol. The police are there. Otherwise there would be violence. Tell the world we need more fuel. Look at this queue,” said Zezi Afrizal, 26, a food vendor.
Others urged authorities to open more fuel outlets.
”We need the fuel badly. Our family wants to go to Medan. We have so many children we’re afraid of disease,” said Rizal, 30, driving a black van.
In the fishing village of Meulaboh, whole swaths of land were stripped bare, with only some home foundations and debris remaining. About a quarter of the town’s 40 000 people were feared dead, but only a fraction of that number had been found.
While supplies were arriving in Banda Aceh, they were piling up at the airport because of the difficulty of distribution. At the main airport, Australian and Singaporean crews unloaded military C-130 aircraft as hundreds milled around trying to get on flights out of the stricken region.
Officials said some aid was trickling through to those in need, despite fuel and transport shortages.
”The aid is getting out when you consider the amount of traffic coming in here. People at the extremities are probably getting it, but there are limitations,” an Australian army major, Grant King, said.
He said each Hercules C-130 plane, after unloading, was flying out with 50-60 refugees on board.
”If you go around to some places in Aceh, IDPs [internally displaced people] are getting aid,” said Michael Elmquist, head of the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in Indonesia.
But many aid workers said they were growing frustrated at their inability to start to work.
Peter Sharwood, an orthopaedic surgeon from a private practice in Brisbane, said he had flown for 15 hours, but was unable to get transport into town to start helping.
”People need to be treated now, so that they don’t get deep infections … Those who had life-threatening injuries to start with have probably already died,” he said.
Sharwood said at least a dozen Australian doctors had flown in, including surgeons and infectious disease specialists.
As the death toll from the earthquake soared to nearly 120 000, nations donated about $480-million towards the world’s largest-ever relief effort. But the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, said even more would be needed.
With pledges mounting, armed forces round the world joined in the aid effort. A US aircraft carrier battle group was heading for Sumatra. South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Pakistan and scores of other nations also had planes in the air, rushing aid to victims.
The US, India, Australia, Japan and the UN have formed an international coalition to coordinate worldwide relief and reconstruction efforts.
”This is an unprecedented global catastrophe and it requires an unprecedented global response,” Annan said, as aid agencies warned that 5-million people lacked clean water, shelter, food, sanitation and medicine.
Death tolls across the region continued to grow. Indonesia led with some 80 000 confirmed dead. Sri Lanka reported about 28 500, India more than 7 300 and Thailand around 4 500, half of them foreigners. A total of more than 300 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya.
As more bodies were recovered, families endured their sixth day of ignorance about the fate of friends and relatives. Tens of thousands were still missing, including at least 2 500 Swedes, more than 1 000 Germans and 500 each from France and Denmark.
In Sri Lanka, where more than 4 000 people are unaccounted for, television channels were devoting 10 minutes every hour to read the names and details of the missing. Often photos of the missing are shown with appeals that they should contact their families or police.
On the Thai resort island of Phuket, people scoured photos pinned to notice boards of the dead and missing in scenes reminiscent of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks. ‒ Sapa, AFP, Guardian Unlimited Â