The official death count from the tsunami that struck Western Indonesia earlier this week stood at 343 yesterday but disaster management official Ade Edward said the toll would rise, possibly by as much as 200. “Of those missing people, we think two-thirds of them are probably dead, either swept out to sea or buried in the sand,” he said.
The tsunami smashed Mentawai islands off Sumatra following a 7.7-magnitude earthquake on Monday.
Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, head of the earthquake research division at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, yesterday said two tsunami-detection buoys donated by Germany and installed off the islands were broken, but the devices would not have made a difference even if they had worked.
“Even if they had worked it would have been useless,” he said, as the waves would have hit the shore before the buoys could have detected the change.
The buoys were installed after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 in which 230 000 people lost their lives.
No preparations
More lives could have been saved had the government equipped people in the Mentawais with a tsunami hazard map, created evacuation zones and established a warning system tailored to the local conditions.
“There were no preparations,” he said. “A tsunami early warning system was non-existent.”
Indonesians were reeling when Mount Merapi volcano, which killed 32 people earlier this week, erupted again yesterday.
“We registered a small volcanic tremor. The threats are still there,” a government volcanologist said. More than 50 000 people have been evacuated. – Ridge Correspondent
Sources: Sapa-AFP-DPA/Business Day/News24
***Media 24 report on SA surfers who were stranded on Mentawai island following the tsunami chaos.