Villagers were not alerted to approaching tsunami because buoys were out of action, Indonesian official says

Villagers in Indonesia were deprived of an advanced alert that a tsunami was heading towards them because part of an early warning system had been vandalised, an Indonesian official said.

The revelation came as video footage from the Mentawai islands revealed the extent of the damage.

Rescuers have warned that the death toll from the tsunami is likely to climb. Hundreds of missing people are believed to have been swept away.

Ridwan Jamaluddin, from the Indonesian Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology, told the BBC’s Indonesian service that two buoys lying off the Mentawai islands were out of service when the tsunami struck.

“We don’t say they are broken down but they were vandalised and the equipment is very expensive,” he said. “It cost us 5bn rupiah (£353,000) each.”

It is unclear how the damage was caused.

Aerial footage from the islands showed villagers and rescuers picking their way through the wreckage.

Elsewhere in Indonesia, a mass burial was held for some of the 30 people killed when Mount Merapi, one the country’s most volatile volcanos erupted.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is due to meet survivors of the twin catastrophes, which struck within 24 hours in different regions, severely testing the country’s emergency response network.

The head of the West Sumatra provincial disaster management centre, Harmensyah, who uses only one name, said search and rescue teams in the Mentawai islands found swollen corpses lying on beaches.

He said the teams were losing hope of finding the more than 370 people missing since the tsunami was triggered by a 7.8-magnitute earthquake.

“They believe many, many of the bodies were swept to sea,” Harmensyah said.

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