A fire was raging in tsunami-stricken Banda Aceh city yesterday, with strong winds fanning the flames across a debris-strewn area spanning at least 1km.
The flames were approaching a power generator, raising fears gas and oil inside the machine may explode. The generator is on a barge that the tsunami washed 3km inland.
Gas cylinders among the ruins of homes were exploding as they caught fire.
Firefighters at the scene said they were running out of water. In one area, debris blocked three fire trucks from getting closer than 200m to the flames and firefighters were dragging dry wood away from the blaze to prevent it from spreading.
No one was known to be living in the area of the blaze, Ulee Lheu, which is part of Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. Much of it was flattened by the Dec. 26 tsunami and detritus is stacked about 3m high.
The blaze started Monday night at 8pm, said a duty officer at the city fire department, Rusmadi, who like many Indonesians only uses one name. He speculated it had been caused by local residents burning garbage.
The fire was a further blow to Banda Aceh residents who survived the killer walls of water that killed about 40,000 people in the city.
Ibnu Sabi was looking for family members and attempting to retrieve what he could from his ruined house when the flames forced him back. He said he was angry because even the damaged remnants of his life had been burnt to nothing.
``This makes it harder for me to find my nine family members,'' he said.
Meanwhile, the health ministry said yesterday a total of 228,164 people are dead or missing in the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami that devasted northern Sumatra.
The ministry's crisis center said 95,992 bodies have been recovered and buried and another 132,172 people were missing.
The health ministry last week raised its death toll from the disaster to 173,981 by adding some 70,000 missing and presumed dead to its figure for confirmed deaths.
The crisis center said many of the 132,172 missing are presumed to be dead, four weeks after the magnitude 9 earthquake and the tsunami it produced. However, an undetermined number of them may be alive and living in temporary camps or otherwise unaccounted for.
"So, please don't say missing means dead," one doctor said. "The health ministry will only announce the confirmed deaths from now on. We are in coordination with other agencies."
Indonesia has reported conflicting casualty figures on the disaster from different ministries.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
RSS