Tsunami’s Carnage Is Vast

With bodies splayed over once-pristine beaches in Sri Lanka, Thailand, India and other southern Asian countries hit by an Indian Ocean tsunami, the estimated death toll passed 26,000 and authorities indicated Monday that it could nearly double.

Dazed and weeping survivors milled among rows of bloated corpses, trying to identify loved ones. In India, they buried victims in mass graves. In Indonesia, some of the dead dangled from trees, where they had been deposited by 30-foot swells. Huge fishing boats were shoved miles inland, and cars and trucks were pulled out to sea.

“It was hell on Earth to see people floating by. We saw an Australian couple swept away in front of us.... We couldn’t do anything,” said Sandra Van Wersch, 31, a Dutch tourist in Tangalle, Sri Lanka. “I’m so lucky. We must have had an angel.”

Relief officials around the world began mobilizing to provide temporary shelter, clean water and food in afflicted areas. Although neither the magnitude 9 earthquake beneath the ocean floor nor the resulting sea surge were the largest in history, “the effects may be the biggest ever,” U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said in New York.

He warned that it would take “many billions of dollars” to provide aid and rebuild lost homes and livelihoods, and he appealed to countries to give generously to forestall disease that could threaten the lives of millions of survivors.

The tsunami struck without warning and took the lives of rich and poor, locals and tourists, even a member of the Thai royal family. Poomi Jensen, 21, the Thai American grandson of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and a former resident of San Diego, was last seen jet-skiing off the popular Thai resort area of Krabi. His body was found by rescue workers, Reuters news agency reported.

Other reports said a disproportionate share of the dead appeared to be children, who may have lacked the wherewithal to escape the tsunami.

“Many women and children died because they could not run fast enough,” said Jur Mahali, 29, as he stood near a spot in Kadaymani, Indonesia, where he said three children perished. He and his parents escaped by running to high ground.

Near the southern Indian city of Cuddalore, a bulldozer dug a mass grave for 150 young boys and girls as their weeping parents looked on.

European tourists began returning home with horror stories. Pat Faragher of London arrived shoeless at Heathrow Airport with her husband, Bill, having survived after a huge wave blasted through the glass door of their hotel room in Sri Lanka. “We have lost everything -- no passports, no papers. All our belongings were swept away,” she told reporters. “But we’re alive.”

“It was like in a horror movie,” a German tourist who arrived in Frankfurt from Thailand on Monday morning told German TV. “All the wrecked cars and motorbikes swimming in the water. I was only running for my life to the next mountain and -- well, I was lucky. At the airport I met two Germans whose legs were torn into pieces from all the wood parts that the wave would carry.”

The quake struck just before 7 a.m. Sunday, 155 miles southeast of the city of Banda Aceh on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. As the sea floor buckled, a colossal surge of water radiated out, reaching the speed of a passenger jet before eventually striking land. Although scientists in the area and around the globe knew of the quake immediately and recognized that it could pose a tsunami danger, officials in the region did not warn coastal dwellers, who were taken by surprise.

“Everyone was just taking their normal Sunday morning. You never expect a 30-foot wave to come and destroy you,” said Prasad Punchihewa, who works in Colombo for SriLankan Airlines. “It’s just devastating, and all this happening to innocent, poor people.”

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies put the 10-nation death toll at 23,710, but said nearly 5,000 people were missing and that the number of dead would surely rise. The Swiss-based organization also said that more than 1 million people had been displaced and over 200,000 had lost their homes.

Authorities in the stricken countries offered their own counts of the dead, totaling more than 26,000: 12,500 in Sri Lanka, 7,000 in India, 5,700 in Indonesia, 1,010 in Thailand, 60 in Malaysia, 43 in the Maldives, 57 in Myanmar, three in the Seychelles and two in Bangladesh. Hundreds were reported killed in Somalia -- 3,000 miles from the quake’s epicenter.

But Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the death toll in his country alone could reach 25,000, Reuters reported.

Eight Americans were believed to be among the dead. Norwegians, Britons, Italians, Swedes, Danes, Australians, Japanese and others were also killed. Israel reported hundreds of its citizens unaccounted for.

Relief workers from the United Nations, the Red Cross and numerous countries began arriving in the devastated region, and appeals went out for money, medicine and other assistance.

The U.S. Agency for International Development dispatched 21 people to assess the disaster and decide what kind of assistance would be needed. USAID has stored emergency supplies in the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates and is already shipping out items that will be needed, including water bladders to transport fresh water, plastic sheeting for temporary shelters, and food, said J. Edward Fox, assistant administrator for the agency.

Fox, speaking in Washington, said other urgent aid would probably include earthmoving equipment to clear away animal corpses and debris and prevent pools of standing water that could breed disease. Mass inoculations for children will also be needed.

“The aftermath potentially could kill as many people as the tsunami itself,” he said.

To stave off contamination, officials in India’s Cuddalore began burying bodies in pits, foregoing the usual Hindu cremation ceremony. Sri Lankans skipped the time-consuming routine of identifying bodies, instead taking photographs before burying them. Relatives will be asked to identify the bodies from the pictures.

“It’s so painful to see these dead bodies,” said C.U. Edirisingha, a marketing and promotion manager with the Sri Lankan tourist board in Colombo, capital of the island nation. He said the government had no choice but to quickly bury the victims because Sri Lanka lacked enough refrigerated facilities to hold so many bodies.

In Banda Aceh, the area of Indonesia hit hardest by the quake and tsunami, at least 80 corpses were visible today on one street alone, some covered with cardboard, plastic and pieces of cloth.

Some buildings collapsed from the temblor, and many others were crushed by the water that followed. Piles of debris 20 to 30 feet tall littered the city. A 75-foot wooden fishing boat had been carried 2 miles inland and slammed into a motorcycle dealership. Officials estimated that 3,000 people died in the city, which has a population of about 240,000.

Sri Hertati, 40, said she and her family ran out of the house when the earthquake hit. Suddenly, they heard people shouting down the street: “Run!” and “Water! Water! Water!”

“I ran, and everyone in the street ran,” she said. Her sister, her sister’s mother-in-law, two nephews and a niece perished. “We lost everything.”

The city was without electricity, and hundreds of people were lined up at gas stations hoping to buy fuel. Hundreds were sleeping in makeshift tents by the roadsides. Others were camped in the center divider of the major four-lane highway running through the city. Residents searched through their destroyed homes, retrieving belongings in suitcases, plastic sacks and bags hung from poles. Others came to gawk at the city’s main mosque, where the grounds were strewn with rubble and the minaret was damaged.

No aid efforts were visible early today. The city seemed calm.

In Sri Lanka, thousands of soldiers were deployed along the hard-hit southern and eastern shore of that country to help find the missing and prevent looting. Military official Daya Ratnayake said some looters told residents that another wave was imminent, only to rob their homes after they fled.

Udaya Nanayakkara, chairman of the Sri Lankan tourist board, said at least 72 foreign tourists were killed in Sri Lanka, but that figure was expected to rise.

The Indian toll was estimated at about 7,000, including 3,000 on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal close to the earthquake’s epicenter. But military authorities on the islands say they believe the ultimate death toll there could exceed 10,000.

Reporters who flew to Andaman and Nicobar with defense officials and ruling Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi on Monday said they were told that 100 air force staffers had been washed out to sea when the tsunami struck their airbase.

A reporter with India’s NDTV cable news station said a mob of at least 100 people swarmed Gandhi’s car, demanding that the government move faster to deliver emergency relief aid.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a relief package of more than $116 million to help support survivors and families who lost loved ones in Sunday’s tsunami. The government promised to pay more than $2,300 to the family of each person killed.

Southern India is used to dealing with disasters such as tropical storms, but the tsunami caused a calamity unseen in the region in living memory.

At least 27 aftershocks had followed Sunday’s earthquake. Two large aftershocks occurred near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The suffering of thousands of homeless people in India’s Cuddalore district grew worse Monday afternoon when a chilling rain started to fall, part of a slow-moving storm that stirred up the surf and raised fears of more big waves.

That was just one of the many challenges facing those who survived the catastrophe as aid officials sized up the potential for a disease-borne disaster.

“Drinking water for millions [has] been polluted,” said Egeland, the U.N. official. “Disease will be a result of that, and also acute respiratory disease always comes in the wake of disasters.”

At Colombo’s airport, medical teams poured in from around the world. A group of 20 Japanese doctors and nurses arrived late Monday; a team of six Israelis was on the same plane.

One of the Israelis, Dan Engelhard, a pediatrician and infectious-disease expert at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem, said treating the wounded would probably be a first priority, followed by the prevention of infectious disease.

“Epidemics are a real concern,” he said. “In Rwanda, we had cholera. In Cambodia, in 1979, we had meningitis. Measles can strike, killing infants. Every disaster is different, so you have to assess the situation.”

Foreign doctors in war-torn Sri Lanka said they were willing to go to the northern rebel-held areas under the control of the Tamil Tigers to help victims in that area, but would only do so if asked by the Sri Lankan government. The Tigers’ official website said that more than 2,000 people in the Tamil-controlled north were killed by the tsunami.

The U.S. announced plans to give about $15 million in emergency humanitarian aid to the stricken Asian countries, officials said. U.S. ambassadors in Sri Lanka, the Maldives, India and Indonesia provided a total of $400,000 in immediate emergency aid to their host nations, and the U.S. will provide $4.5 million to the Red Cross and Red Crescent, which issued a worldwide call for $6.5 million, officials said.

A U.S. official in Bangkok, Thailand, who asked not to be quoted by name, said that the U.S. military was considering sending a forensics lab to the region to help identify victims.

“People are being found washed up in swimsuits. Their bodies are battered; they have no IDs. Identification is going to be a real challenge,” he said.

The disaster also led to calls for a tsunami early-warning system in the Indian Ocean, of a type in place in the Pacific. U.S. and U.N. officials said previous studies had estimated the risk of a tsunami in the Indian Ocean to be relatively small.

U.N. officials said a conference next month in Kobe, Japan, would focus on improving early-warning systems.

Questions will be raised, USAID’s Fox said, by “the mere fact that people didn’t have agreements to pick up the phone in Indonesia and call Sri Lanka and say, ‘We just had a major seismic event and you better watch out.’ ”

Magnier reported from Colombo and Watson reported from Cuddalore. Times staff writers Richard C. Paddock in Banda Aceh, Sonni Efron in Washington, Barbara Demick in Seoul, Tony Perry in San Diego, Janet Stobart in London and Christian Retzlaff in Berlin and Times wire services contributed to this report.

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Waves of disaster

Survivors are burying the dead and officials are tallying the damages from the ÒmegathrustÓ quake and tsunami waves that flooded shores across the Indian Ocean over the weekend. HereÕs a look at the toll and how the waves spread across the region, which has no tsunami warning system:

Death toll

Preliminary figures, by country:

Country Deaths

Sri Lanka 12,500 India 7,000 Indonesia 5,700 Thailand 1,010 Malaysia 60 Maldives 43 Myanmar 57 Seychelles 3 Bangladesh 2 Somalia hundreds

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Worst natural disasters

HereÕs a look at the worldÕs worst known natural disasters, according to the ÒTop 10 of Everything, 2004Ó:

Type of No. of disaster Location Date deaths

Flood Huang He August 3.7 River, China 1931 million

Earthquake Near East/ May 20, 1.1 Mediterranean 1202 million

Volcanic Tambora, April eruption Indonesia 5-12, 92,000 1815

Tsunami Krakatoa, Aug.27, 36,380 Sumatra, Java 1883

Avalanche Alps, Italy 218B.C. 18,000

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Facts about the disaster

* The tsunamiÕs effects extended as far as Mexico, where the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center reported sea level fluctuations of well over 6 feet.

* UNICEF estimates at least one-third of those who died were children, and the proportion could be up to half. Children make up at least half of the population in Asia.

* It was the first tsunami in the Indian Ocean since 1883, when the Indonesian island of Krakatoa was destroyed by a volcanic eruption.

* U.S. scientists measured the quake at magnitude 9, the largest temblor in 40 years and the fourth largest since 1900.

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How the tsunami progressed across the Indian Ocean:

* Quake pushes up the ocean floor off Sumatra, displacing a very large column of water and creating the tsunami.

* Within 1.5 hours, the waves flood low-lying coastal areas of Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia.

* About three hours after the quake, the waves reach eastern Sri Lanka, en route to the Maldives and the eastern shores of India.

* About six hours after the quake, the waves approach the northeastern African shore, flooding the Somalian coast.

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Major tsunamis

June 7, 1692 - Tsunami that originated in the Puerto Rico trench killed 2,000.

Nov. 1, 1755 - Tsunami in the Atlantic Ocean destroyed Lisbon and killed an estimated 60,000.

Aug. 27, 1883 - The eruption of the Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia killed an estimated 36,000.

June 15, 1896 - A total of 27,122 died when the east coast of Japan was swept by waves as high as 100 feet after a tsunami that began in the Japan trench.

Dec. 28, 1908 - An estimated 58,000 died in Messina, Sicily, and other parts of Italy in an earthquake and tsunami.

March 3, 1933 - A tsunami triggered in the Japan trench killed 3,000 and caused widespread devastation on Honshu.

May 22, 1960 - Coinciding with a week of quakes, a tsunami that originated in south-central Chile damaged Chile and Hawaii and killed 1,500.

March 27, 1964 - A tsunami triggered by the Anchorage, Alaska, quake killed 115.

Aug. 23, 1976 - A Celebes Sea tsunami struck the Philippines, killing 8,000.

July 17, 1998 - About 2,200 people died in Papua New Guinea after a tsunami. * Sources: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; International Tsunami Information Center; ESRI; Associated Press; U.S. Geological Survey; Graphics reporting by Cheryl Brownstein-Santiago and Sharon Bernstein.