A young Indian survivor of Sunday's tsunamis stretches her hand to get her share of food and clothes donated by voluntary organisations, yesterday. - Reuters
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AP):
PLANES LOADED with everything from lentils to water purifiers touched down across Asia yesterday, the start of the largest relief effort in history, as aid workers predicted the death toll from this week's earthquake and tsunamis would top 100,000.
Military teams reaching the west coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island for the first time reported scenes of total devastation.
"We're facing a disaster of unprecedented proportion in nature," said Simon Missiri, Asia Pacific chief at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. "We're talking about a staggering death toll."
FIGURE SOARED
That figure yesterday soared to about 77,000. The survey of Sumatra nearest the epicentre of Sunday's massive quake that launched a wall of water around Asia highlighted the scale of the challenge relief organisations will face in the weeks and months to come.
In the first visit to the battered region, news crews flew over town after town covered in mud and sea water. Homes had their roofs ripped off or were flattened. There were few signs of life, except for a handful of villagers scavenging for food on the beach.
"The damage is truly devastating," said Major General Endang Suwarya, the military commander of Sumatra's Aceh province, who toured the west coast by helicopter. "Seventy-five per cent of the west coast is destroyed and some places it's 100 per cent. These people are isolated and we will try and get them help."
With tens of thousands of people still missing, Peter Ress, operations support chief for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said the figure for the dead and missing would be "absolutely enormous."
"I would not be surprised that we are over 100,000 dead when we start seeing what's happened in, particularly, (India's) Nicobar and the Andaman Islands," he said.
