Tidal Wave Death Toll Rises

Monday July 20 11:28 AM EDT

Tidal wave death toll rises

AITAPE, Papua New Guinea (Reuters) - At least 3,000 people were killed by three huge tidal waves that devastated villages in Papua New Guinea's
remote northwest, West Sepik's local governor estimated Monday.

The stench of death from rotting corpses, vegetation and animal carcasses was suffocating in the tropical heat, said rescuers, as they desperately
searched for survivors.

More than 1,000 have been confirmed dead since the tidal waves caused by an offshore earthquake raged across a lagoon on Friday and swept away
villages and people, many of them small children unable to run away or climb coconut trees to safety.

The death toll will certainly rise as thousands of villagers are still missing -- many having fled terrified and injured into the jungle-clad mountains behind
Sissano lagoon.

"What you are seeing today is just survivors, but where is everybody else," asked West Sepik local governor John Tekwie.

"I would give you a near accurate estimate of 3,000 (dead)," Tekwie told reporters after visiting the devastated villages that once dotted Sissano
lagoon west of the town of Aitape.

"Many more bodies are still stuck in the debris within the mangrove swamps, within the lagoon itself, caught between the debris of the buildings, the
coconut trees, all the bush, the trees that have been thrown into the lagoon," Tekwie said.

Up to 10,000 people are estimated to live in the area. Rescuers say only one in five of those they have found are children.

"The rest are dead," said one.

Sweating under the tropical sun, husbands and fathers wept over their shovels as they dug graves for the dead among the splintered remains of their
palm-roof homes.

"The people are out there burying bodies," Catholic priest Augustine Kulmana told Reuters. "They have buried 700 and thousands are missing. It (the
death toll) could be as high as 3,000."

Many of the dead are children too small to run away and too weak to climb trees before the waves, one of which was said by survivors to be 10
meters (30 feet) high, engulfed them about 7.00 p.m. (0900 GMT) Friday.

"Where are the little ones? Where are the children?" a local health official asked survivors as they staggered into a small hospital in nearby Vanimo.

"Many children have disappeared. There are a lot of injured adults coming into the hospital, but no children," he said.

"One helicopter pilot said he saw a lot of bodies trapped in the mangroves and they were children," the official said.

Catholic priest Jim Croucher told reporters at Vanimo: "When a plane comes in and you go and pick up a little kid and he is dead it just leaves you so
empty."

Rescuers in small boats fished bodies out of the lagoon, many tangled in the nearby mangrove swamps, while others ventured out to sea to find more
bodies.

"The water in the lagoon is so contaminated with dead bodies that most of the fish and crabs in the lagoon are dying," provincial government official
Dickson Dalle told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.

Rescuers fear disease will soon become a major problem.

"The patients are so badly infected now -- the smell, the stench. They say you step off the plane there and you can smell the death in the air, but it's not
only the death, it's infection," Croucher said.

Five villages which once clung to a narrow spit of sand along Sissano lagoon were destroyed by the tidal waves. The village of Warapu was among the
worst hit, with an estimated 500 of its 1,395 people feared dead. Nearby Arop and Sissano were also hard hit.

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Bill Skate Monday toured the disaster zone. "We are finding more dead bodies now than yesterday -- every minute
and hour we find more dead bodies," Skate told reporters.

Pope John Paul urged the world to give "prompt and effective" help to survivors.

A telegram of condolence signed by the Vatican's secretary of State said the Pope was praying for the victims and sent his blessing to all the country's
people.

"He expresses hope that the international community will show its solidarity by providing prompt and effective assistance to the needy," said the
telegram, signed by Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

Monday, shocked survivors seemed unable to comprehend why the ocean had turned against them with such vengeance.

"They are stunned. They just stare," said Australian businessman Robert Parer in Aitape, 30 km (20 miles) east of Sissano lagoon..

Barefoot survivors carried the injured in their arms into small district hospitals overflowing with patients, many lying on the floor with multiple broken
bones and cuts.

"There are hundreds of injured still to find and each night there will be hundreds dying," Parer said.

Papua New Guinea is the land that time forgot, where magic and the worship of ancestors and spirits persist, and many believe the villages destroyed
by the tidal waves will now remain deserted.