Aid flows into cyclone-struck Indonesia

LEMBATA: Indonesian navy ships packed with aid arrived on Thursday in a cyclone-ravaged section of the archipelago, as the death toll from the disaster rose to nearly 180 people, including dozens killed in neighbouring East Timor. Local authorities declared a state of emergency for East Nusa Tenggara — among Indonesia’s poorest provinces and the epicentre of the disaster — until early May. Torrential rains from Tropical Cyclone Seroja, one of the most destructive storms to hit the region in years, turned small communities into wastelands of mud and uprooted trees, sending thousands fleeing to shelters amid widespread power blackouts. Some weighed abandoning their disaster-struck hometowns for good. “I don’t want to stay here any longer even though I was born in this village,” said Emirensiana Wua, 51, a resident of hard-hit Lembata island. “It’s scary. There’s nothing left. It was all destroyed.” The cyclone is now headed for Australia where authorities urged holidaymakers to evacuate a stretch of the country’s western coastline before it hits landfall late on Sunday or early on Monday. In Indonesia, the navy vessels docked at Lembata and Adonara islands with a hospital ship that was also en route to the ravaged area, where thousands have been left homeless and dozens are still missing. The storm on Sunday swept buildings in some villages down a mountainside and to the shore of the ocean on Lembata. — AFP