The provincial capital, Banda Aceh, is an entirely broken city.
It has no electricity except for a few small official centres, no telephones except for local calls from the same government centres, and as of a few hours ago, no petrol.
People are looting cars that have been stacked up by the waves and just smashed into buildings, trying to siphon petrol out, but this city really is logistically completely in a state of collapse.
Possibly that's why the bodies that were dumped in the streets almost two days ago now lie exactly where they were dumped, bloating up in the streets, with thousands of people sleeping a second night in the streets, amongst those bodies.
There are no signs at all that aid is getting in.
We hear that a plane might be landing in Banda Aceh in the next few hours.
The government says it's coordinating the relief effort from Medan, but we simply aren't seeing any results of that here at all.
People seem to be mainly doing the body recovery themselves, but obviously the task has been too much for them.
ABC (Australia)
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more on Aceh:
Tomi Soetjipto/Reuters
It has no electricity except for a few small official centres, no telephones except for local calls from the same government centres, and as of a few hours ago, no petrol.
People are looting cars that have been stacked up by the waves and just smashed into buildings, trying to siphon petrol out, but this city really is logistically completely in a state of collapse.
Possibly that's why the bodies that were dumped in the streets almost two days ago now lie exactly where they were dumped, bloating up in the streets, with thousands of people sleeping a second night in the streets, amongst those bodies.
There are no signs at all that aid is getting in.
We hear that a plane might be landing in Banda Aceh in the next few hours.
The government says it's coordinating the relief effort from Medan, but we simply aren't seeing any results of that here at all.
People seem to be mainly doing the body recovery themselves, but obviously the task has been too much for them.
ABC (Australia)
-
more on Aceh:
Tomi Soetjipto/Reuters
