A tsunami strikes Papua New Guinea, turning a peaceful evening into a night of terror and death

By LISA CLAUSEN

he three giant waves that rolled toward Papua New Guinea's far northwest coast came from the horizon at extraordinary speed. Starting as long, silent ripples on the deep waters of the Bismarck Sea, they swept toward the shore at dusk on July 17. Gathering height and power as they neared the beaches around Sissano Lagoon in West Sepik (Sandaun) province, the waves--now up to 10 m high and sounding, some said, like a jet plane taking off--crashed over the thatched wooden houses as villagers were preparing dinner. By the time a Hawaiian monitoring center detected the underwater earthquake 30 km offshore that had triggered it, the tsunami had swept away thousands of people.

No one knows yet just how many were killed by the freak waves--a week after the disaster, the official death toll was 1,500, but thousands remained unaccounted for, and bodies--some partly eaten by crocodiles, dogs and pigs--were still being spotted in the lagoon and nearby mangroves and bush. While the 700 injured were tended in local hospitals and by doctors and nurses flown in from Australia, Japan and New Zealand, numbed survivors gathered in makeshift aid centers. The tales were wrenching: some parents had lost all their children; other victims had been unable to find a single family member alive; 200 children who were visiting one of the villages for a traditional festival were feared dead, swept away in an instant. Sister Cheryl, of the Catholic Missionaries of Charity in the provincial capital of Vanimo, about 110 km west of the disaster zone, recalls seeing a five-year-old girl alone at one of the shelters: "'I'm the only one,' she told me. 'My mother and father have died.'"

Many of the survivors, fearing more waves, took refuge on higher ground, some trekking for four hours through dense jungle to villages inland. Behind them lay devastation. Village huts, some built on the sandy shoreline shaped by a 1935 tsunami, were ripped from the ground. Royden Howie, of the Adventist Development & Relief Agency, flew over the scene soon afterward: "There were houses floating in the lagoon, debris everywhere. You'd never know there had been villages there." The region's lack of airstrips meant that Australian Army Hercules planes ferrying in medical supplies and a mobile field hospital had to land in Vanimo. Their cargo was then reloaded onto small planes and helicopters to be taken to the centers where aid workers and church officials cared for survivors.

P.N.G.'s worst natural disaster this century, the tsunami has brought new grief to a country wearied by the ravages of nature. Last year, more than 150,000 people were left near starvation by the worst drought in five decades; earthquakes in 1993 drove thousands of people out of the town of Lae, in Morobe province; and in 1994, a volcanic eruption devastated Rabaul, the capital of East New Britain province, and forced the evacuation of 100,000 people. "Since the eruption, it's been one thing after another," says Howie. The series of disasters has meant emergency equipment is in constant use: last week ADRA flew into the area 16 water tanks that were shipped from Australia last year for drought victims. Another 20 of the 1,200-liter tanks, specially crafted to be carried by helicopters into inaccessible areas of the rugged country, were on their way.

By week's end, the area surrounding the lagoon and the worst-hit villages of Sissano, Warapu and Arop had been sealed off to stop the spread of contagion from decaying corpses. But some people from the vanished villages are already asking aid workers for axes and bush knives so they can rebuild their homes and vegetable plots on their traditional lands. Says Sister Cheryl: "There is so much sorrow, so much hurt and damage." Papua New Guineans will mourn, as they have done so many times before. And then they will begin again.