Indonesian authorities yesterday revised down the death toll from the Java earthquake to nearly 5,800, as new aid supplies helped survivors move forward on the long road to recovery.
The UN said distribution of food, medicines and water had greatly improved in devastated areas of central Java island, but emphasized the urgent need to provide shelter to some 340,000 left homeless.
In the disaster area, life slowly returned to normal, with morning markets bustling and primary school students sitting for end-of-year exams despite the fact that hundreds of schools were flattened in the May 27 quake.
After sending assessment teams to Central Java and Yogyakarta Provinces, the social affairs ministry revised down the quake death toll from 6,234 to 5,782. The number of injured also went down to from 46,000 to 33,000.
But the ministry dramatically raised the number of people displaced in the crisis, saying more than 343,000 had spent a ninth night in the open, many of them under rudimentary tents made of plastic sheeting and bamboo poles.
"Emergency shelter remains one of our priorities," Puji Pujiono, the deputy area humanitarian coordinator for the UN, told reporters.
Yogyakarta provincial secretary Bambang Priyohadi said 200,000 tents were needed, while the UN appealed on Sunday for an influx of building materials, saying tents were sometimes difficult to set up amid the rubble.
The Indonesian government has earmarked more than US$160 million to rebuild more than 200,000 homes destroyed or badly damaged in the zone.
The UN has estimated that US$100 million are needed over the next six months to cope with the disaster.
Meanwhile, authorities evacuated hundreds of people living near Mount Merapi yesterday as activity increased at the volcano for a ninth straight day since an earthquake rocked the region, officials said.
Puji Pujiono, the UN deputy area humanitarian coordinator in the nearby quake zone, told reporters that authorities had evacuated mainly women, children and the elderly from the slopes of the peak.
Some 650 people were evacuated to safety from hamlets in the danger zone on Merapi's western slope, ElShinta radio reported.
Officials in Sleman district on the peak's southern slope sent some 20 trucks to evacuate at least three hamlets located closest to the crater's mouth, the radio report said.
Subandriyo, of the vulcanology office in Yogyakarta, the main city in the quake zone, said all settlements within a 7km radius of the top of the mountain should be emptied.
"The flows of heat clouds are now taking place every hour, and continuously, and this is worrying," Subandriyo told journalists at his office.
He also said that in the past few days, lava and the toxic clouds of gases and ash had drifted up to 4km down the southern slope, more than double the distance seen before the May 27 earthquake.
In the first six hours yesterday, the smoldering peak spewed out 118 lava trails and 73 heat clouds, according to data released by the vulcanology office in Yogyakarta.
Subandriyo said authorities were still observing a red alert at the peak, first declared on May 13. Following that initial alert, some 22,000 villagers were evacuated.
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