Christmas celebrations traditionally filled with laughter and uplifting music were replaced by somber prayers for tsunami victims in an area hit without warning, leaving at least 429 people dead and thousands more homeless in Indonesia.
Pastor Markus Taekz yesterday said that his Rahmat Pentecostal Church in the hard-hit area of Carita did not celebrate with joyous songs this year.
Instead, he said only about 100 people showed up for the Christmas Eve service, usually attended by double that number.
Photo: AFP
Many congregation members had already left the area for the capital, Jakarta, or other locations away from the impact zone.
“This is an unusual situation, because we have a very bad disaster that killed hundreds of our sisters and brothers in Banten,” he said, referring to the province on Java Island. “So our celebration is full of grief.”
Church leaders called on Christians across Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, to pray for victims of Saturday’s tsunami.
The death toll climbed to 429 yesterday, with more than 1,400 people injured and at least 128 missing after the tsunami slammed into parts of western Java and southern Sumatra islands, Indonesia Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.
More than 16,000 people were displaced and there was an urgent need for heavy equipment in remote Sumur subdistrict, a hard-to-reach area near Ujung Kulon National Park that experienced heavy damage, he said.
Some villages there have been cut off due to damaged roads and bridges, making it difficult to supply aid and help people who may be injured or trapped.
Military troops, government personnel and volunteers continued searching along debris-strewn beaches. Yellow, orange and black body bags were laid out where victims were found, and weeping relatives identified the dead. Many searched for missing loved ones at hospital morgues.
The front man of popular pop group Seventeen was to bury his wife yesterday, compounding a tragedy that saw his three bandmates also killed when a tsunami tore into their open-air concert.
Dramatic footage posted online showed fans clapping and cheering before the wave smashes into the concert, hurling band members from the stage and slamming into the audience.
Lead vocalist Riefian Fajarsyah posted a video clip of himself on social media stroking the coffin of his wife, actress and TV personality Dylan Sahara, in her hometown of Ponorogo on Java Island.
“How can I live without you, Dylan Sahara?” Fajarsyah wrote on his widely followed Instagram account.
“Thank you guys for your prayers. Only God can repay your kindness. Please send prayers for my wife Dylan so she will be at peace,” he wrote.
The waves followed an eruption and apparent landslide on Anak Krakatoa, or “Child of Krakatoa,” a volcanic island that formed in the early part of the 20th century near the site of the cataclysmic 1883 eruption of Krakatoa.
Indonesian President Joko Wi-dodo, who faces a tough re-election campaign next year, vowed to have all tsunami-detection equipment replaced or repaired.
Nugroho acknowledged on Twitter that the nation’s network of detection buoys had been out of order since 2012 because of vandalism and budget shortfalls.
However, Indonesian Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency head Dwikorita Karnawati said the tsunami was likely caused by Krakatoa’s volcanic activity and so could not have been picked up by the agency’s sensors, which monitor conventional earthquakes responsible for more than 90 percent of Indonesia’s tsunamis.
Additional reporting by AFP
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