AFP

Survivors of an Indonesian earthquake that killed at least 271 people, many of them children, appealed for food and water Wednesday as heavy rain and aftershocks hampered rescue efforts among the rubble of devastated villages.

The calls for help came as authorities warned that debris from landslides caused by the strong quake near the town of Cianjur in West Java needed to be cleared as rains forecast for the coming weeks threatened a second disaster.

Two days after the quake flattened their homes, residents were still trying to retrieve priceless belongings including family photos, religious books and marriage certificates.

“Although some supplies have arrived, it is not enough. We got rice, instant noodles, mineral water but it’s not enough,” Mustafa, a 23-year-old resident of Gasol village, told AFP. 

Mustafa had just dug through the rubble of an elderly neighbour’s house at her request, appearing from the destroyed facade carrying a pile of clothes before returning to collect rice, a gas stove, canisters and frying pans.

In Talaga village, some residents put signs on the windows of damaged houses and the front of tents that read “We need help!” 

In the streets, at least three people held up cardboard boxes, asking for donations. Evacuees crammed under flimsy tents, unable to move inside from the rain in case buildings collapse from an aftershock.

A shallow 3.9-magnitude aftershock sent panicked evacuees running from shelters on Wednesday, according to an AFP reporter at the scene. Authorities had recorded 171 aftershocks as of Wednesday evening.

More than 61,000 people have been displaced by the quake, around 2,000 are injured and 40 missing, the national disaster mitigation agency (BNPB) said Wednesday. 

Around a third of those found dead so far are believed to be children, BNPB chief Suharyanto, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told a press conference, without providing an exact figure.

The government has dispatched tents and other supplies to Cianjur for the displaced, and the military deployed 12,000 personnel on Wednesday, officials said.

Heavy rain was hampering those efforts in about a dozen villages where more than 22,000 houses had been destroyed.

“For the refugees… their basic life necessities must be guaranteed — water, food, that’s non-negotiable,” Suharyanto said.

– Hamlet buried –

Two villages remain isolated, said Henri Alfiandi, head of Indonesia’s search and rescue authority Basarnas, in a video posted to social media. 

He said he had received reports of villagers trapped without food and water, and some forced to sleep alongside dead bodies.

“The people there can’t even ask for help,” he said, adding that three helicopters were being sent to drop aid.

Another hamlet in Cugenang district, the worst-hit by the quake, was buried by a landslide, Muhammad Wachyudin, an official from the Cianjur disaster mitigation agency, told AFP.

Rescuers believed some bodies were buried in Kampung Pos but they have not been able to reach them.

Indonesia is vulnerable to landslides and flash floods in the rainy season, which has already begun and peaks in December in West Java. 

The country’s meteorology agency warned that Cianjur is prone to another catastrophe.

“We have to be vigilant over a potential second disaster, such as a landslide,” Dwikorita Karnawati, head of the meteorology, climatology and geophysics agency told a press conference Tuesday.

Karnawati said rivers could be blocked by landslides or rubble and spark a flash flood in Cianjur.

“We urgently need to clear materials and rubble that block river flows in the upper hills,” she said.

– ‘Praise God!’ –

On Tuesday, Cianjur’s residents began mourning loved ones, laying them to rest in accordance with their Islamic faith after authorities released them from morgues.

Some searched the wreckage for belongings. For one couple, there was a glimmer of hope.

Mimin, 52, and her husband Rosyid, 67, scrabbled through their destroyed home looking for one item only — a treasured two-gram gold ring. 

They pulled clothes from the concrete, patting and shaking them, until the gleaming piece of jewellery that represented their savings popped out.

“Praise God! I found the ring!” Mimin yelled.

Indonesia experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide.

Monday’s tremor was the deadliest in the archipelago nation since a 2018 quake and resulting tsunami killed more than 4,000 people on the island of Sulawesi.

The European Space Agency will vote on Wednesday on whether to spend billions more euros to keep up with rising competition in space, as well as unveiling its much-anticipated new crop of astronauts.

The ESA’s 22 member states, whose ministers charged with space duties have been meeting in Paris since Tuesday, will decide on meeting the agency’s request for a record 18.7 billion euros for new programmes over the next three years.

The figure is more than 25 percent higher than the 14.5 billion euros agreed at the ESA’s last ministerial council in 2019.

ESA director-general Josef Aschbacher told AFP that Europe risks “falling out of the race” in space if it does not expand the budget. 

Europe faces an increasingly crowded market in space, with competition coming not just from the long-dominant United States but also from rising powers such as China and private companies like billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

However the request for countries to open their purse strings comes as Europe struggles against high inflation and an energy crisis.

France called for a united Europe in space on Tuesday.

“At the end of these discussions, there must be a single Europe, a single European space policy and unfailing unity in the face of Chinese ambitions and American ambitions,” France’s economy minister Bruno Le Maire said at the meeting.

“If we want to be independent, we have to put money on the table.”

At the opening of the council, Aschbacher stressed that nations would reap a huge economic benefit from their investments.

Each country can choose how much it contributes to the budget, which includes three billion euros for monitoring climate change, 3.3 billion to the Ariane 6 rocket launcher system and three billion to robotic exploration missions, among others projects.

– Rocket launcher boost –

Some of the most difficult negotiations have been about rocket launchers, which are crucial for Europe to be able launch missions into space without outside help.

The ESA has struggled to get off the ground since Russia withdrew its Soyuz rockets earlier this year in response to European sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The job has been made more difficult by delays to the next-generation Ariane 6, which was supposed to have its maiden flight in 2020 but will now blast off at the end of next year.

The ESA has even had to resort to using the Falcon 9 rockets of its rival SpaceX to launch two upcoming scientific missions.

The subject of launchers is regularly a source of “friction” between European countries, said Philippe Baptiste, head of France’s National Centre for Space Studies.

But the talks were given a boost on Tuesday when the ESA’s biggest contributors France, Germany and Italy announced their support for Ariane 6 as well as the small Vega-C launcher.

The agreement indicated that the countries recognised their “interdependence” in space and paved the way for the launchers to be paid for, said ESA’s director of space transportation Daniel Neuenschwander.

Expected to be less controversial are projects that help monitor the impact of climate change back on Earth.

A poll released by the ESA last week showed that nine of 10 European citizens “want to see space used even more to monitor and mitigate climate change,” Aschbacher said.

But trickier could be the ESA’s 750-million-euro contribution to the European Union’s satellite constellation project Iris, which is planned to provide secure communication throughout the bloc from 2027.

The project is mostly funded by the EU, which has different member states than the ESA — most notably the UK. 

– New astronauts –

Once the budget is adopted, the ESA plans to unveil its latest crop of astronauts — the agency’s first new recruits since 2009. 

Between four and six people have been chosen out of more than 22,500 applicants after a long selection process.

One of the new recruits could eventually head to the International Space Station.

Training for the new recruits will begin in April 2023 at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, the facility’s head Frank De Winne said.

Additionally, the ESA is also expected to announce one or more astronauts with a physical disability — a first in the history of space travel. 

More than 250 people applied for the role after the ESA conducted a “parastronaut feasibility study”.

When Husein’s body arrived to be lowered into the ground, his grief-stricken relatives broke down, some in wails so loud they echoed through the undulating hills of West Java’s Cianjur.

The 48-year-old construction worker and father of four, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, was building a house with three others when a strong earthquake shook the town’s foundations on Monday.

It caused buildings to collapse on residents, landslides to bury locals and forced families to reckon with the trauma of losing those closest to them. One of Husein’s co-workers also died.

“This is a disaster,” said Husein’s 30-year-old niece Yunisa Yuliani at his funeral in the village of Gasol near Cianjur, one of the hardest hit by the quake that has killed 268 people.

“It’s so hard to even look at his children, they are so young. They keep asking about their father. How do I explain it to them?”

Staring at his body, which had been carried for the duration of a five-minute walk from the construction site, his sister who lived next door to him became inconsolable. 

Several of his nieces hugged each other tightly. A tearful man was so heartbroken he had to be held up by two of his friends.

“I just lost a brother 10 days ago. He died of appendicitis and now I lost another brother,” said Husein’s 43-year-old sister Siti Rohmah.

– ‘Uncle! Uncle!’ –

Husein left behind a three-year-old daughter who does not fully understand that she has lost her father.

His eldest son, in his 20s, watched the digging of his grave quietly as his seven-year-old son cried in a relative’s arms and neighbours began a cleaning ritual for his body.

His wife could not be at the funeral as she was working in Saudi Arabia.

It was a scene replicated across the Cianjur area as families retrieved their loved ones from morgues to bury them in hastily arranged ceremonies in accordance with their Islamic beliefs.

“I still held on to hope that he was the last person who was still missing. I pray God will accept his good deeds and give him an easy journey,” said Rohmah.

His body was laid on a tarpaulin spread out on a dirt road, wrapped in a white cloth and covered by a traditional orange Indonesian batik shawl. A dozen men stood and prayed over him.

As Husein was lowered into a makeshift grave, men chanted a prayer while others looked at the ground solemnly.

His body was covered with a stack of bamboo and large banana leaves before bystanders covered the grave with soil.

Neighbours then began to recite Islamic verses for the departed.

“I just hope my uncle died in peace,” said Yuliani.

Before Husein’s body was collected for burial, it was placed in a red and white tent where it could be cleaned, and where the family could get one last look at his face.

His family’s wails broke an eery silence that had descended on the town in the quake’s aftermath.

“Uncle! Uncle!” is all that could be heard from the enclosed marquee.

Rising temperatures are fuelling widespread environmental degradation across Australia and supercharging natural disasters, according to a government report released Wednesday in the wake of flash floods on the country’s east coast.

The State of the Climate report found global warming was also slowly melting Australia’s fragile alpine regions while contributing to ocean acidification and rising sea levels. 

Climate researcher Ian Lowe said the report was a “frightening” wake-up call for Australia, which relies heavily on coal and gas exports for economic growth.  

“The scale of changes demonstrates that cleaning up our energy use is an urgent priority,” Lowe said. 

“We also need to reduce our exports of coal and gas.” 

The report, a joint effort between the government’s weather bureau and national science agency, found Australia’s climate had warmed by an average of 1.47 degrees Celsius since records began in 1910. 

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said it was “sobering” reading. 

“For our environment, for our communities, this report reinforces the urgent need for climate action,” she said. 

– ‘Record-breaking extremes’ –

Australia has in recent years experienced a series of extreme weather events linked to rising global temperatures. 

Flash floods swept through parts of inland New South Wales earlier this month, tearing entire homes from their foundations in some country towns.

Tens of thousands of Sydney residents were ordered to evacuate in July when floods swamped the city’s fringe.

An east coast flooding disaster in March — caused by heavy storms in Queensland and New South Wales — claimed more than 20 lives.

Catastrophic bushfires swept through huge chunks of New South Wales in the “Black Summer” of 2019 and 2020, while the Great Barrier Reef has suffered four separate mass coral bleaching events since 2016. 

“These changes are happening at an increased pace,” the State of the Climate report found. 

“The past decade has seen record-breaking extremes leading to natural disasters that are exacerbated by anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last week unveiled a bid to host the 2026 COP summit, seeking to repair Australia’s international reputation as a climate change laggard. 

Albanese’s centre-left government introduced a 2050 net zero emissions target following its election earlier this year but has faced calls domestically to do more. 

University of Melbourne climate scientist Andrew King said Australia needed to rapidly cut its carbon emissions. 

“The consequences of our continued use of fossil fuels are clear in Australia like elsewhere,” he said. 

“We must act quickly to decarbonise our economy to limit further damages from worsening extreme events.” 

Ailie Gallant from the Australia Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes said the deterioration in the country’s climate would “continue without deep and aggressive cuts to carbon emissions”.