CNN:Hopes fade of finding survivors

[News_Editor]

The death toll from the Indonesian earthquake has risen above 5,800 as hopes fade of finding more survivors. Thousands of people were injured in Saturday's devastating quake, with many victims still in urgent need of medical assistance. Hundreds of thousands of people are also reported to be homeless.

http://edition.cnn.com/rssclick/2006/WORLD...on=edition_asia

[astral]

Here is a report from a friend who lives in the area:

To all our concerned family, friends, and the greater family of friends, thank you for your messages, phone calls and emails which did not reach me until much later than you would have liked. You have seen more images via TV than I have (none) since we have been without electricity (and water which comes out of electricity-driven pumps). It has been kind of fun since we at Pak Cokro’s house in central Jogja were relatively unscathed except for the collapse of the outer property walls. We slept outside under the open-air pendhopo with candles and gas lamps. Many neighbors had to sleep in the alleyways or under tents in open fields. That would have been fine except that insult to injury, nature decided to give three days of rain during the dry season.

A sole battery-driven radio kept us up to date on events with interludes of – strangely enough – continuous repetitions of John Lennon’s “Imagine”, later giving way to one of Rita Coolidge’s 1970’s hits. (How do they find these things? And why do they play them for an audience who largely doesn’t understand the words?) The radio stations were miraculously able to stay on air, and as they started to give details, the horror -- no that’s not right because we weren’t really in it, so horror isn’t really the right word – the shock and dread dawned on each of us as the death count went from 3 to more than 3,000 with over 5,000 casualties. Although we realized how lucky we were, the trauma set in anyway.

Through all of this, because of renovation of the main house, Pak Cokro who had already been displaced for several weeks from his comfortable routine -- of early morning meditation in front of the TV, lots of naps always with the radio, mostly classical gamelan, all-night shadow plays, but also Indonesian pop, keroncong, dangdut, and comedy -- remained calm. He did say that he had never experienced such a quake even though he had lived in California for over 21 years. He continued to muse upon some of his current topics such as why the gender player was missing on a recent wayang, how Pak ‘nggung Warso always welcomed him and called out the great Projopangrawit, Mloyosudiro, and Mloyoresoko to play when he visited.

What’s really surprising is that the media, world-wide, had been playing up the possible eruption of Mount Merapi, 20 km (a stone’s throw) to the north, continuously (that’s what CNN does… continuous) focusing on the issue of whether villagers living on it’s slopes should evacuate; whether the people should listen to the seismologists, backed up by the Sultan, who said that danger was imminent, or to the gate-keeper of the sacred shrine up near the top, Pak Marijan who said that the spirit of the mountain had not yet given indication. No one expected anything from the other direction, from the sacred spirit Queen of the South Sea, Ratu Kidul. Seems like kind of a reminder, “Hey, I’m still down over here, and I’m the important spirit even up on that mountain!” Some locals are saying that this “musibah”, this catastrophe is a message from Allah admonishing people for straying too far into sinful sensuality with the numerous sexy dangdut music shows at the town squares, and the pick-up scenes at the high-class hotels. Too much “hiburan”, recreation. Teguh Ostenrik, the iconoclast abstract painter has just sent me a phone message noting that the Aceh tsunami was one day after Christmas, the Nias earthquake one day after Easter, and this, one day after Ascension Day. He wonders if there is any connection.

I came to Solo today, partly to get away from the cloud of trauma, but also to look into how Solo was handling things. Solo is fine. There are a few cracked buildings, especially the new super malls which have sprung up these last two years. Also, I need to be at the computer (with constant electricity) and a reliable internet connection to reply to all of you, and to prepare for a 3-week trip beginning this Saturday to Bangkok.

It’s ironic that I had just come back from Hong Kong where having escaped further danger of Mount Merapi’s build-up, I encountered a number 8 warning (out of 10) for Typhoon Chanchu which had just devastated the Philippines. I lucked out over there too. The storm veered to the east and hit Fujian instead so I could come back to Jogja’s cooling down fire mountain only to wake up Saturday morning to the roar and flashing yellow something. I thought “Uh oh. Time to remember my grammar school disaster training. Get under the door frame! But I had been soundly sleeping dreaming of something or someone. I awoke to the shaking and sliding just enough to know that I was better staying inside if this was an eruption. How magnificent, the power of the mountain! How bright the yellow light, must be the reflection of lava spitting out glorious flame. Vesuvius! I knew that unless this was a Mount Helena scale eruption where we would have no hope of living beyond the next few minutes, we would be okay. Merapi is just far enough away, and the nature of that particular volcano is not one to spit out truck-sized boulders to our front yard. When the time comes, it will come. We are lucky. Our friends are all safe. A few houses gone down and a few injuries, but no deaths of friends to report. By the way, the earthquake did trigger an eruption of Merapi. Elisabeth and her daughter Sarah ran out of their house on the gentle rise up the mountain just in time to join villagers watching the billowing belch of Ratu Kidul’s northern home.

Love,

Alex

Pak means Uncle, a term of respect.