JAKARTA, Dec 28, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The number of people evacuated after
Indonesia’s deadly tsunami has nearly doubled to some 40,000 while more than
7,000 were injured in the disaster, officials said Friday, as they trimmed
the official death toll.
Authorities said 426 people had been killed — down from a previous tally
of 430 — with double-counting by different districts blamed for the change.
Two dozen people remain missing almost a week after the disaster.
The fresh figures come a day after Indonesia’s disaster agency raised the
danger alert level for an erupting volcano that sparked the killer tsunami at
the weekend.
They have also warned that fresh activity at the crater threatened to
trigger another deadly wave.
Previously, the number of displaced — including many left homeless —
stood at 22,0000 but that figure has now jumped to just over 40,000,
according to the latest tally.
Some 7,202 people suffered injuries, jumping from 1,495, while nearly
1,300 homes were destroyed as the waves crashed into the coastlines of
western Java island and south Sumatra, authorities said.
“We’re recommending that people who lived near the beach be permanently
relocated,” national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told a
press briefing in Jakarta.
“But it’s a last-ditch option because it’s not easy with limited space and
people reluctant to move away.”
A no-go zone around rumbling Anak Krakatoa has been widened to five
kilometres (three miles) — up from a previous two kilometres — with
residents warned to stay away from the coast.
The crater’s status has been raised to high alert, the second-highest
warning on Indonesia four-point danger scale.
Flights are being redirected away from the area.
A section of the crater — which emerged at the site of the Krakatoa
volcano, whose massive 1883 eruption killed at least 36,000 people —
collapsed after an eruption and slid into the ocean, triggering Saturday
night’s killer wave.
Before and after satellite images taken by Japan’s space agency showed
that a two square kilometre chunk of the volcanic island had collapsed into
the water.
Indonesia, a vast Southeast Asian archipelago, is one of the most
disaster-hit nations on Earth due to its position straddling the so-called
Pacific Ring of Fire, where tectonic plates collide.
The tsunami was Indonesia’s third major natural disaster in six months,
following a series of powerful earthquakes on the island of Lombok in July
and August and a quake-tsunami in September that killed around 2,200 people
in Palu on Sulawesi island, with thousands more missing and presumed dead.