By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 20, 2006; A14
PANGANDARAN, Indonesia, July 19 -- Panic raced through this beleaguered beachfront town Wednesday, carried by word of mouth and cellphone text messages: The sea is rising again! Another tsunami! Run!
Two days after a wall of water battered the southern coast of the Indonesian island of Java, killing at least 531 people, hundreds of villagers fled Pangandaran as the rumors swirled. Scores crowded onto motorbikes, often three or four at a time, streaming into the surrounding hills. Motorists pulled over along winding roads after reaching higher ground, anxiously checking their cellphones for news and gesturing for travelers heading toward the town to stop.
The rumors proved to be unfounded. But they kept many of the people who had escaped Monday afternoon's tsunami from venturing down from hilltop camps to check on their abandoned homes.
Although emergency assistance is pouring into Pangandaran, relief workers said they were scrambling to keep up with the demand from refugees, including many whose houses were spared but who remain too shaken to return.
Indonesian officials said Wednesday that the tsunami, triggered by an undersea earthquake, had displaced more than 95,000 people along Java's southern coast. Most of them are in the hardest-hit district of Ciamis, which includes Pangandaran. But the officials estimated that only 700 houses had been destroyed in the district.
"Most of the people here have not lost their homes or their jobs," said Igun Gunawan, a volunteer helping to coordinate relief for 4,000 people who have taken refuge in two schools atop a lush hill. He estimated that only 35 families at his site require new houses. "The others are looking for temporary shelter because they're too traumatized to go down again, especially the females," he said.
Sumiati, a chatty woman of 45 in a red head scarf and blue floral gown, had been washing clothes at her seafront home Monday afternoon when she was startled by a roar. "I thought it was a jet airplane flying over," she said. "Then my neighbors yelled, 'Tsunami!' It was chaos."
Her family scurried into the hills, finally reaching one of the two schools perched amid palm groves high above glistening rice paddies. She and three dozen fellow villagers pitched camp in one of the small elementary school classrooms. They hauled the old wooden desks and chairs into the yard and spread thin, woven mats out on the floor.
By nightfall, Indonesian soldiers had set up a field kitchen on the hill and begun preparing vats of rice and noodles for the refugees, Sumiati recalled.
The school has only two bathrooms, leaving refugees increasingly concerned about hygiene. Sumiati, who uses only one name, said she had planned to return to her house Wednesday and take a bath for the first time in two days.
"Then my brother came and said, 'The seawater is rising again,' " she recalled with a sad smile. "I decided to postpone my bath until later on. Until then, I had thought the situation was returning to normal."
Such anxiety is widespread and has been compounded by the relentless rattling caused by aftershocks, some quite strong. Since Monday's 7.7-magnitude earthquake, more than 50 tremors have struck Java, including one off the south coast Wednesday afternoon that measured 5.5.
Then just before 6 p.m., a 6.2-magnitude quake hit Java's west coast, shaking tall buildings 120 miles away in Jakarta, the capital, and prompting television broadcasters to urge viewers to remain on guard for another tsunami.
"We can't predict how long these people will remain displaced," said Wasdi, a spokesman for Ciamis district's emergency command post.
He said the refugees would not be allowed to remain indefinitely in schools, mosques and other public buildings but would be accommodated in camps. Relief agencies will need mattresses and high-quality tents for them, he said.
In the first 24 hours after the disaster, only a few relief groups reached Pangandaran. But by Wednesday, the sleepy town center was reduced to gridlock with aid trucks, ambulances and army and police vehicles struggling to edge forward.
The main traffic circle was festooned with the brightly colored flags of political parties whose representatives had also arrived to provide aid. Indonesia's most active Islamic party, the Prosperous Justice Party, raised its black-and-gold banners and began distributing relief within hours of the disaster.
Indonesian banks, telephone companies and other businesses erected their own tents and command posts to coordinate charity efforts. A few international agencies, notably Oxfam, had also begun trucking in supplies to the town, located about an eight-hour drive through mountains from Jakarta.
The seafront, which bore the brunt of the destruction, was mostly quiet Wednesday, although several bulldozers, scrapers and front-end loaders had begun clearing the road and beach of debris.
A few people scavenged in the remains of their houses or hotels, hauling out mattresses, chairs and plastic hangers. Meanwhile, teams of soldiers, police and volunteers picked through the rubble of a modest housing complex of bamboo, concrete and thatch searching for two residents who had been reported missing.
Special correspondent Yayu Yuniar contributed to this report.