PADANG: Planes and helicopters packed with rescue workers and supplies landed for the first time Wednesday on remote Indonesian islands that were pounded by a 10-foot (three-meter) tsunami, sweeping away villages and killing at least 154 people. The first aerial surveys of the region revealed huge swaths of land underwater and the crumbled rubble of homes torn apart by the wave. One lay tilted, resting on the edge of its red roof, with tires and slabs of concrete piled up on the surrounding sand. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, meanwhile, cut short a state visit to Vietnam to deal with two major disasters that struck Indonesia in less than 24 hours. The country's most volatile volcano, Mount Merapi, 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) to the east, erupted at dusk Tuesday, sending up searing ash clouds and killing more than two dozen people. Both events fell along Indonesia's portion of the Pacific Ring of Fire, a series of fault lines that are prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity stretching from the Western Hemisphere through Japan and Southeast Asia. "I want to make sure the emergency response has been running well," Yudhoyono, a former four-star general, told reporters in Hanoi. "I want to see for myself the condition of the victims." For days, rough seas and bad weather have hampered relief operations, leaving residents to fend for themselves. With not enough people to dig graves, corpses littered beaches and roads, according to district chief Edison Salelo Baja. Fishermen were scouring waters in search of survivors. Disaster officials were still trying to reach more than a dozen villages on the hardest-hit Mentawai islands — a popular surfer's destination that is usually reachable only by a 12-hour boat ride. But they were preparing for the worst Wednesday, with hundreds of body bags being sent to the scene, said Mujiharto, who heads the Health Ministry's crisis center. The 7.7-magnitude quake that struck late Monday just 13 miles (20 kilometers) beneath the ocean floor was followed by at least 14 aftershocks, the largest measuring 6.2. Harmensyah, who heads the West Sumatra provincial disaster management center, said the number of people killed in the tsunami had climbed to 154 and more than 400 others were missing. The first cargo plane loaded down with 16 tons of tents, medicine, food and clothes arrived Wednesday afternoon, said Ade Edward, a disaster official. Four helicopters also had landed in Sikakap, a town on North Pagai Island, which will be the center of relief operations. "Finally we have a break in the weather," he said, adding that he hoped search and rescue operations would finally pick up pace. "We have a chance now to look for the missing from the sky and also to survey the extent of the damage." Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini and Irwan Firdaus contributed to this report.
