Dear Friend,

this is only limited posting considering recent disaster in Aceh.

rz

-----Original Message-----
From: Ery Djunaedy [mailto:ery@...]
Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 5:55 AM
To: Baitnet; ImasSG; Karisma ITB; Milis Halal; Milis Ruame Banget;
Milis SD-Islam; NBB; Parakanca; Pengajian Eindhoven; PPI/e; Teknisi
AC; Tentera Usrah; TF89; uka@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Muhammad Ikhwan Jambak
Subject: After Day-3: The catastrophe in Aceh


Dear All,

I am sorry if you find this email intruding, or even spoiling your
festive seasons. But as a native Acehneese, sending this email is one
thing that I can do to help the people of Aceh, Indonesia (and also
the people of southern Asia), to help them to convey their desparate
call for help.

As you all might have known, when we were all in our holiday mood,
many of us were busy partying, an earthquake shook the bed of the
ocean, some 200km off the shore of Aceh province,
Indonesia (or Atjeh, as it is popular in Netherlands). What follows
are the terrible wave flooding all shore as far as 3000km (yes, thats
three thousand kilometers) away. If the
water could inflict many harm to the people as far as Somalia, you
can imagine what it could do to the people of Aceh, just a few
hundreds of kilometers away.

I am not in the mood of comparing bruises, which country have been
hardest hit by the disaster. I am also biased when I say this because
I am Acehneese: but I feel that what really happened in Aceh has been
under represented to the public.

I am also not in the mood to blame anybody for this. But what you see
in the media, especially in the early hours, is a very low body count
in Aceh. Up to day-1, the body count was around 2000 deaths in Aceh,
while it was more than 10000 in Srilanka. I cannot blame the media,
nor the Indonesian goverment officials, for this under representation.

Aceh is not a popular tourist destination, and it has been under
civil emergency law for years due to the separatist conflict with the
goverment. It is basically a closed province to the outsider. I
realized that it is no wonder that it took days for everybody to
realize just how terrible the catastrophe is.

Only in day-3 the Indonesian Vice President (as the head of disaster
relief efforts) admitted that the body count can be as high as 40000
deaths (yes, thats fourty thousand). I, an
Acehneese myself, only after three days can grasp the scale of the
catastrophe, and deep in my heart I am worried that the Vice
President might be wrong: it might be worse than
that. I just wish that I was wrong, but some foreign news agency has
put a higher prediction of death toll, even higher than my grim
estimate.

What I can do is sending this email to you. I apologize for this long
email message. What you will find below is a collection of reports,
some are first hand account I collected from my relatives back home,
others from somebody else's relatives that has shared their story in
many mailing lists.

What I hope is, firstly, that you can imagine the scale of the
catastrophe, and secondly, that you will donate some of your money to
the people in Aceh. In the bottom of this message, I include some
ways to transfer your money (NONE of them is my account, btw) to bank
accounts managed by both institutions and individuals in Netherlands
and some other countries. The individuals managing the accounts are
volunteers that will know how to channel the money to the
people of Aceh.

Please forward this email to as many people as you know.

If you have not already known, you can find a map below that shows
Aceh, and how close it is to the epicentrum:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4129805.stm
The map also shows the two cities mentioned in this email, Banda Aceh
and Meulaboh.

Condition in Banda Aceh

Aceh is a province in the northern tip of Sumatra island in
Indonesia. Banda Aceh is the capital of the province, and it is
located in the northern tip of the province.

Rahma, my own cousin, a medical student in University of Syiah Kuala,
Banda Aceh, was in the middle of a lecture in the hospital when the
disaster started. Before she knew what
really happened, the water started to gushing in from the front gate
of the hospital.

Every body tried to escape from the back of the hospital, only to
find a high wall blocking their way. They managed to escape by
climbing on cars and vans parked near the wall,
and then climbed the wall, over the barb-wire on the top of the wall,
jump on the other side into the the trench, and running desperately
to the nearby 3-storey building.

She watched how the streets became river, and how the sudden tide
washed away whatever blocked its way. Those who did not manage to
reach a place higher than the water level will
certainly be drowned, no matter how good swimmer they are. Unless if
they managed to grab something to keep them afloat.

Ironically, the catastrophe with that kind of scale was just passing
by. The disaster was over within an hour or two. The water was
quickly disappeared into lower lands or flowing back to the sea.

Leaving behind an unimaginable destruction to the city.

She walked back to her house in Kampung Keramat district, witnessing
the horrible sight. Bodies were left behind by the tide on the side
of the streets, caught between the branches on the trees, even on the
roof of many houses.

Kampung Keramat district is around 3-4 km away from the sea shore.
But when she got home, she found 4 ships conviniently parked on the
street in front of her house. Unknown bodies
were scattered all over the place.

Ipul and Abu Bakar were in a shopping district in the city center
when it all happened. Ipul said, "The giant wave was like a vertical
wall moving from the sea. I simply run, and
within minutes I found myself climbing a tree on the side of the
street. We just hang on to the tree, and watched how the tsunami
washed away everything. Cars, houses, and people
screaming, all washed away easily, like bubbles in the whirl pool."
Both of them wait for a full hour before they have the gut to step
down from the tree.

Rusli Juneid, a fish-monger from Kampung Jawa district lost his wife
and 3 sons. What he did since Sunday morning was moving from one dead
body to another all over the city. No clothes, wearing only
a "sarong" on his waist, on his bare foot he walked across the
city. "I will not rest until I find the body of my loved-ones.
Whatever it takes, I will go to every body I found to have a peek on
the face. I am very sorry why I did not stay with them at home."

Ulele was a small town on the sea front serving as the harbour of
Banda Aceh. The population was 40000 people. The whole town was
flattened down to the ground by the disaster
leaving many questions on just how many survisors are there.

Those who can afford it were fleeing the city to neighbouring areas,
like Rahma my cousin, who is now back in our home town Lhokseumawe.
But most of them are left with no other alternative but to stay.

The central mosque in Banda Aceh is now serving as a makeshift
shelter. Dead bodies were still scattered in the mosque's front yard,
and also in the neighboring areas. The survivals of the disaster must
now endure another struggle to stay alive: finding food, clean water,
and sanitation facility. The mosque and other makeshift shelter were
overwhelmed with the number of the homeless people, so that the basic
sanitation facility like toilets are a luxury.

After two days with virtually no food, many of them started to
hysterically chanting "food, food". If they found anything edible,
they will let their children to eat it first. Instant noodle will be
eaten just like biscuits because there is no place to cook.

Conditions in Meulaboh

If you think that Banda Aceh's condition is horrible, Meulaboh is
actually worse than that. (Meulaboh in Acehneese language means "set
ashore", so you can imagine how close it is to the sea front). Here
is some first-hand account from Meulaboh.

Agus Maidi works for a plantation company in Meulaboh. On Sunday
morning 26-Dec-2004 he and his wife went for shopping around 8.00am.
That was when the earthquake happened. They saw many buildings
collapsed. His wife fell and suddenly felt nauseus. They went to
their house and found their children and parents were safe.

In finding their family were fine, they felt that they need to go and
help other people, especially in the city center near the beach,
where they saw the buildings have collapsed.
But before they reached the city center, they saw waves were building
up to 20m high on the beach. That was when all the people started to
run frantically to safety. "It was more horrible than the panic we
saw in Titanic movie", he said. They run and fell and many trampled
down by the stampede.

The water rised to 1m high within seconds. They found a military
truck and climbed it. Overthere they watched the horror. Many people
were trying to climb to the roof of the
building only to fall down to the wave because the building
collapsed. They saw many cars were carried away by the wave very
easily, and that made them wonder why the truck was not
washed away, probably because it is very heavy.

The roof of the truck was so full, so that it was decided that all
the men were supposed to get off the truck, to give more space to the
women and children. Agus managed to swim to the roof of the building
50m away, but some of the men could not make it, either drowned or
hit by tree trunk carried by the strong current.

The water level was decreasing in two hours. After that they walk
and swim for 3km to their house and found that their parents and
children are safe in the local mosque.

Agus and family are safe. But they are the lucky ones. The conditions
of Meulaboh are even more devastated then Banda Aceh.

Indonesian Vice President after seeing Meulaboh from air on Wednesday
(29-Dec-2004), announced that the estimate for that city alone is
10000 deaths. With initial population of 60000, that means one in six
people of Meulaboh have perished in the disaster.

In the first picture in the following link, you can see how Meulaboh
has been cleanly shaven down to the ground (if you find the link was
cut into two lines, you have to
cut-and-paste the two lines into one):

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2004/12/28/international/20041229_ACE
H_SLIDESHOW_index.html

I just hope that the footage of the first slide, which says that the
death-toll is 40000, is not true. I just cannot imagine that two out
of three people there had perished.

The terrain in the surrounding areas is really hard. The city is
totally isolated from outside world. No bus can go there, no plane
can land. The only option is helicopter and
ship.

The Vice President has ordered one Navy ship dedicated to help
Meulaboh. But this was on day-3 after the catastrophe. And it still
takes time until significant relief efforts reach Meulaboh.

One volunteer who was there said that if we have 10000 volunteers to
evacuate all bodies in Meulaboh, we will need a week to do it. But we
dont have 10000 volunteers. And we are lack of fund to even send a
minimum food for the survival of the survivors.

But that is not the end of the story. Another story, even grimmer,
was about to unfold: Simeuleu island, a small island near Meulaboh
that is located even nearer to the epicentrum. There are 76000 people
used to live there. As of now, Wednesday 29-Dec-2004 2100hrs UTC,
there is no information on that island.

Call for donation

I can only hope that you will share some of the money you have, no
matter how small it is. The amount that over here can only buy one
Cappucino Grande from Starbucks can be used to support a family for a
day. Use the banks in your country to avoid (or at least reduce)
paying the transfer fee. I only include accounts in Netherlands,
Germany, Japan and Singapore. If you live in another country and
would like to donate, please drop me an email, and I will try to find
somebody or institution who volunteered to be the fund-raiser. Or
easier, please contact the Indonesian Embassy or Consulate in your
country.

If you send in your donation please indicate "Aceh relief fund". You
can select whichever institution you are comfortable with to give
your donation.

I wish you all a very happy new year ahead. Please share some of your
joys with the survivors in Aceh.

Best regards,

Ery Djunaedy

PhD candidate in building physics
Technische Universiteit Eindhoven
PO Box 513
5600MB Eindhoven
Netherlands
Phone: +31-40-247 5790
Fax : +31-40-243 8595
email: e.djunaedy@...


Netherlands

1. Account No. : 57 59 12 278
Account holder: Sri Nurdiati
Bank : ABN Amro
Address : Station Plein, Enschede
Phone : 31-53-4894160 (office)
email: s.nurdiati@...
Note:
Sri Nurdiati is a Phd candidate in mathematics at
the University of Twente. She is the Co-ordinator for
Netherlands Chapter of KZIS-Isnet, a network of muslim
students from Indonesia all over the world.

2. Account No. : Giro 555
Account holder: de Samenwerkende Hulporganisaties (SHO)
Bank : Postbank
website: http://www.giro555.nl

Germany

1. Deutsche Rotes Kreuz
Bank für Sozialwirtschaft
Konto: 41 41 41
Bankleitzahl: 370 205 00
http://www.drk.de/spenden/index.html

2. Indonesian Embassy
Lehrter Str. 16-17,
10557 Berlin
Note:
The Indonesian Embassy in Berlin accept cash donation
for Aceh relief fund

3. For money transfer (managed by Indonesian Embassy)
Account holder: Iwan Wijaya Mulyatno
CommerzBank
Konto : 260 3116 (Euro)
Blz. : 100 40000
versendungszweck: Aceh relief fund

Japan

1. Indonesian Embassy
Information Section
Indonesian Embassy, Tokyo
Tel. 03-3441 4201; Fax 03-3447 1697, ext. 222 & 225
Note:
The Indonesian Embassy in Tokyo accept cash donation
for Aceh relief fund

2. For money transfer (managed by Indonesian Embassy)
Account No. : 013862 JPY 3102.01
Account holder: Indonesian Embassy - Donation for
Natural Disaster
Bank: Bank Negara Indonesia – Tokyo Branch

Singapore

1. Indonesian Embassy
7 Chatsworth Road
Singapore 249761
Telp: 6737 7422
Contact: D. Haryadi (DID: 6839 5454)
Note:
The Embassy is open from 09:00-17:00 to accept donation
for Aceh relief efforts

2. Account no. : 102-18433-5
Account holder: ROMYALDY
Bank: Posbank
email: romyaldy@...
Note:
Romyaldy is a Phd candidate at Nanyang Technological
University in Singapore. He is organizing a fund-raising
for the Indonesian community in Singapore. He will be
able to send your donation along with other donations.

3. Account no. : 017-9-075574
Account holder: Huda Muttaqien
Bank : DBS Bank
Note:
Huda Muttaqien is also organizing a fund-raising
for the Indonesian community in Singapore. He will be
able to send your donation along with other donations.

United Kingdom

1. Indonesian Embassy
Donations by cheque should be made payable to the
Indonesian Embassy and sent to the Embassy of the
Republic of Indonesia, 38 Grosvenor Square,
London, W1K 2HW.

2. For money transfer (managed by Indonesian Embassy)
A/C Name : Indonesian Embassy
A/C no. : 51368451 (Sterling account)
Bank : HSBC Bank plc, 79 Piccadilly, London W1V 0EU
Sort code : 40-05-26