Asia toll tops 22,000

GALLE, Sri Lanka: The carnage from an earthquake-driven tidal wave that devastated coastlines from Asia to Africa doubled to more than 22,000 dead yesterday, and rescuers struggled to deliver aid to the hardest-hit areas, raising fears about the spread of disease as bodies rotted on tropical beaches. Offers of aid poured in from around the globe, but millions of people remained homeless and thousands were still missing a day after the disaster. The number of dead was expected to keep rising as workers reached remoter regions and the sea washed up more corpses. UN Undersecretary Jan Egeland, who is in charge of emergency relief, said the disaster could be the costliest in history, “probably many billions of dollars.”

More than 12,000 people died in Sri Lanka, nearly 5,000 in Indonesia, and 4,000 in India. The International Red Cross, which reported 23,700 deaths, said it was concerned that waterborne diseases like malaria and cholera could add to the toll. Dazed tourists evacuated the popular island resorts of southern Thailand, where the Thai-American grandson of revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej was listed as one of more than 900 people dead. Poom Jensen, 21, was reportedly jet skiing when the tidal wave struck. Scores more died in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives — and thousands of miles away in Africa. Officials in Thailand and Indonesia officials conceded that immediate public warnings of monster waves could have saved lives. The only known warning issued by Thai authorities reached resort operators when it was too late. But governments insisted they couldn’t have known the true danger because there is no international system in place to track tidal waves in the Indian Ocean, and they could not afford the sophisticated equipment to build one.

The 9.0-magnitude quake struck off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra early Sunday, unleashing waves that roared across the Bay of Bengal at 800 kilometres per hour, ripping into Thailand in an hour and striking Sri Lanka and India within two-and-a-half hours. They raced 2,800 miles to Africa, killing hundreds of people in Somalia and three in the Seychelles. In a scene repeated across the region, bodies were still coming in last evening to the hospital in Sri Lanka’s southern town of Galle — one of the worst-affected areas of the hardest-hit nation. A tractor carried about 15 corpses of mostly women and children, some wrapped in white plastic sheets. A large crowd had gathered at the hospital trying to learn if their missing family members were there. “The toll is increasing,” said Brig Daya Ratnayake, a military spokesman. “We are finding more bodies.” The six-metre-high (20-foot-high) waves smashed into seaside towns and resorts, sweeping away boats, homes, hotels, fishermen and holidaymakers.

At the Thai island resort of Phuket, the torrents pulled a six-month-old Australian baby from her father’s arms. A large proportion of the victims were youngsters, and funerals were held for children and teenagers who could not cope with the fury of the sea. Ted Chaiban, chief for the United Nations Children’s Fund in Sri Lanka, estimated that nearly half the victims there were children. In Cuddalore, India, the bodies of more than 150 children killed were buried in a mass grave — their weeping, red-eyed parents looking on as a bulldozer filled the hole with sodden earth. In Banda Aceh, capital of Indonesia’s strife-torn Aceh province, the streets were filled with overturned cars and the rotting corpses of adults and children. Shopping malls and office buildings lay in rubble, and thousands of homeless families huddled together in mosques and schools. The city of 400,000 people is the nearest population centre to the epicentre of the quake and was virtually unique in being destroyed by the temblor — the world’s most powerful in 40 years.