‘It has been very, very, very busy’

From a sleepy airstrip with three scheduled flights a day, Banda Aceh airport has been transformed into the hectic hub of one of the world’s biggest aid operations to date, handling about 200 flights every 24 hours. It’s struggling to cope with the sudden transformation.

Air-traffic controller Rohadi Sartono has witnessed the dramatic change from his perch in a makeshift tower atop a building that houses the airport’s rest rooms.

”It has been very, very, very busy,” Sartono said, adding that he and other controllers have been skipping sleep to keep tabs on the huge volume of flights.

The Aceh airport used to be open from sunrise to sunset, said Novaro, vice-president of a state company that runs the facility. ”Now, it’s up from sunrise to sunrise.”

It’s so busy, he and his colleagues have barely had time to mourn the 20 airport workers — two thirds of its pre-disaster staff — who were washed away or lost family in the massive December 26 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the region.

The catastrophe also damaged the airport’s tower, said Novaro, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.

As the local staff struggled to manage the astronomical surge in flights and keep the skies above Aceh’s shattered landscape safe, Singapore’s air force delivered a temporary tower with 11 military controllers to help out. That tower handles most military flights, while Sartono’s focuses on civilian planes.

Now, the airport has the feel of a crowded marketplace, as commercial and military aircraft unload tons of supplies, huge numbers of foreign volunteers and grieving relatives rescued from the surrounding country.

Swarms of local men, watched over by police and soldiers, jostle to offer arriving passengers a taxi or motorcycle ride.

Indonesian aviation officials replaced the airport employees who didn’t show up after the tsunami and added 60 additional workers to help handle the huge number of flights.

Frightened of numerous aftershocks that followed the mammoth magnitude-nine quake that spawned the killer waves, controllers refused to work in the damaged tower, prompting authorities to build a temporary wooden tower on top of a one-storey building housing the airport’s rest rooms.

From there, staff have to juggle flights jostling for limited space on the tarmac to deliver their precious cargos of aid and helpers.

The airport only has parking space for six aircraft at any time, so other planes are told to wait at an airport in Medan, about a 40-minute flight away, or have to circle over Banda Aceh until a parking slot opens up.

Some pilots have complained that they are being kept from landing when they came to help, Sartono said.

Despite the steep increase in air traffic, authorities said the airport remains safe and played down concerns that a rash of mishaps is an indication that airport personnel cannot safely handle the huge volume of flights.

A cargo plane struck a herd of cattle that strayed on to the airport’s runway early on Tuesday, causing no injuries but halting flights — the lifeline of support to the devastated region — for most of a day.

Last week, two helicopters on a relief mission nearly collided, airport officials said without elaborating.

On Monday, a United States helicopter on an aid flight crashed in a rice paddy outside the airport, injuring all 10 American navy personnel on board. An investigation is under way to determine the cause of the Seahawk chopper’s crash, officials said.

Another South African is safe

A total of 361 South Africans remained unaccounted for on Saturday night, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Sunday.

On Saturday, a spokesperson said one of six South Africans missing and feared dead in the tsunamis that struck south-east Asia two weeks ago is alive.

The man contacted his brother on Friday evening to say that he is safe, a spokesperson said.

”He just said that he was okay but had been injured. The brother told us the line had been bad, so we do not know the exact circumstances but he’s alive,” the foreign affairs spokesperson said.

The number of missing South Africans now stands at five. The number of confirmed deaths in Thailand remains at 10.

The 10th fatality was confirmed on Thursday when family members identified a victim at a morgue in Thailand. He was identified by the media on Friday as Avadya Berman (31).

Thailand to bid for tsunami warning centre

Thailand will this month put in a bid to become a regional surveillance centre for the Indian Ocean area in the aftermath of the December 26 tsunami disaster that killed more than 156 000 people, a senior Thai official said on Monday.

Thailand will propose itself as a regional disaster surveillance centre at an upcoming ministerial meeting in Bangkok later this month on the need to set up an early warning system for the Indian Ocean area similar to the tsunami alert system already in place for the Pacific Ocean.

Information and technology ministers from the 11 nations affected by the tsunami will meet in Bangkok on January 28 and 29.

”I think Thailand is ready, if everyone wants us to become a centre for the early warning system,” said Smith Dharmasaroja, Vice-Minister to the prime minister’s office.

Smith, a former director general of Thailand’s meteorological department who warned the government about the threat of tsunamis 10 years ago, was recently appointed by Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to establish a disaster warning system for Thailand in the wake of last month’s tsunamis that hit the country’s south-western coast, killing more than 5 000 people, many of them Western tourists.

Other Asian countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, have also expressed an interest in becoming the regional surveillance centre for future tsunamis and other natural disasters.

Watch out for tsunami fraudsters on the net

Meanwhile, internet scam artists are using Asia’s tsunami disaster to trick people into revealing private financial information to bogus disaster aid sites, MasterCard International warned on Monday.

MasterCard has teamed up with a digital fraud-detection company, NameProtect, to help federal law enforcers stop the scam, the United States-based credit-card firm said in a statement received in Singapore.

The con artists are using a technique called ”phishing” under which people are tricked into revealing banking and other confidential information to seemingly legitimate websites after receiving e-mails.

The US is the source of much of the spam or unsolicited mass e-mails afflicting internet users worldwide.

”Sadly, we have identified numerous phishing websites that are trying to take advantage of people’s compassion — but we are working with federal law enforcement to shut them down,” said Sergio Pinon, senior vice-president of Security and Risk Services for MasterCard International.

”By clearing out the scam artists, we hope people will continue to donate to legitimate relief efforts. However, we recommend that people do so by directly making their donations on the official websites of the relief agencies instead of responding to unsolicited e-mails.”

Consumers are encouraged to be wary of phishing attempts, including messages with spelling or grammatical errors.

”Banks do not contact customers to ask them to provide sensitive information such as passwords and PINs [personal identification numbers] online,” the statement said.

”Do not click hastily on links appearing in incoming e-mails and provide payment card or other personal information,” it said.

It also called on the public to notify banks and law enforcers about suspicious solicitation e-mails. — Sapa-DPA, Sapa-AP, Sapa, Sapa-AFP

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