‘Many more dead people in many places’

THE body-searchers of Banda Aceh are running out of time. In six days it will be the one month anniversary of the tsunami which devastated the northern Indonesian city and it is also when, the government said yesterday, it would call a halt to the search for remains.

This is despite the discovery of significant numbers of bodies every day since the disaster. The last confirmed daily tally was for Tuesday this week when 1,481 new corpses were retrieved and buried across Aceh province, the vast majority in Banda Aceh.

So far 91,313 people have been lifted from the streets, dragged from rivers or pulled from debris, but the most conservative estimate of numbers killed stands at 116,000 - leaving over 25,000 unaccounted for.

Many of the missing still lie within metres of family homes, their presence suspected and often smelt but rarely seen except by those who choose to look.

For the Red Cross team who have volunteered to search the substantial suburb of Rukoh, however, offering their services is not really a matter of choice.

“I must,” is the only way Adi Susanta can explain his involvement in the grim task. A carpenter in his 30s from an area outside the city, he has been working on search teams for 24 days and says he has helped recover 1,000 corpses.

“The first time I felt afraid and I almost fainted, but then it just got easier,” Adi says.

Today’s 24 member team is a mix of similarly nervous novices and people who are now well accustomed to the job. Dressing themselves from a shared store of white plastic overalls, wellington boots, rubber gloves to the elbows and face masks, they split into groups of four.

They are just seven minutes into their search of the remnants of a dismantled residential street when a shout goes up on the edge of the swamp.

With eyes sharpened by experience, a senior member of the team has spotted remains lying beneath a felled palm tree.

The Red Cross has 500 volunteers combing neighbourhoods like Rukoh, facing daily the horrors of death and the threat of disease.

Adi has to go back to work at the end of the month but he hopes the search will continue indefinitely, even when the official operation ends.

“Many more dead people in many places,” he says. “Keep looking, keep finding.”