International   

Torn from their parents' arms

PANGANDARAN (Indonesia): Irah was playing with her 6-year-old son on the beach when the tsunami struck. The beach-front vendor survived Monday's onslaught, but her only child was torn from her arms.

"The water was too strong," Irah said on Tuesday as she dug through a pile of rubble with her bare hands, close to the spot where she was last with her son.

The mother's grief was shared by scores of people in Pangandaran, a once-idyllic Indian Ocean resort that bore the brunt of the earthquake-triggered tsunami, the second such disaster to hit Indonesia in 19 months.

Witnesses said waves two metres high tore into the beach with a tremendous thunder, dragging cars, fishing boats and people as far as 400 metres inland. They turned the resort's main street into a jumble of destroyed restaurants, shops and tangled fishing nets.

The Abukhamiss family, on vacation from Saudi Arabia, said they only noticed something was terribly wrong and fled when other patrons at the Bamboo Cafe started screaming.

Hamed, 40, lost his wife and four-year-old son. "I'm not going to give up," he told himself as he was repeatedly sucked under the current and battered by debris. "I'm not going to die." His other son, Yousif, 12, saw the wave approaching with a pair of binoculars, but no one believed him when he yelled "Tsunami!"

Suprapto, a 25-year-old fisherman, said he had just dropped off six tourists at a nearby nature preserve when he noticed a sudden rise in the water. He remembers glancing at his watch at 4.15 p.m. and then looking up to see the wave.

Pedi Mulyadi, a 43-year-old vendor, said he was waiting on the beach for customers when the wave struck and killed his wife, Ratini, 33. The pair were clinging to each other when they were swallowed by the torrent of water and pulled 90 metres inland, he said. "Then we were hit by a piece of wood," Mulyadi said. "When the water pulled away, she was dead." — AP

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Displaced Lebanese flee to mountain villages
53 killed in Iraq blast
Mandela keeps opinions to himself
China grows by 10.9 per cent
Warrant for Benazir
Torn from their parents' arms
China flood toll 198
U.K. bans Islamist groups
Civilian dies in blast
Security concern for Hasina
U.S. for India, Pakistan continuing cooperation

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu