Bali cries, again<\/p>\n
Jodie Harrison, Contributor, Kuta, Bali<\/p>\n
Oct. 1, 2005 began as yet another day in paradise on the idyllic
\nisland of Bali. The sun was shining, the frangipani blooming and
\nthe streets were colorfully decorated with ceremonial offerings
\nfor the eve of Galungan, the Balinese \"Christmas\" celebrations.
\nOn previous nights, fireworks had been set off on the beach to
\nward off evil spirits.<\/p>\n
Despite the overnight 126.6 percent fuel price hike, the
\nfeeling among the locals was one of optimism as their businesses
\nhad recovered to 50 percent since the 2002 Bali bombings. Again,
\ntourists were returning to Bali, and for more than one-third of
\nthe population whose income relies on tourism, this was a very
\ngood thing.<\/p>\n
\"Many people starved after 2002,\" said Katot Landriani as she
\npainted flowers on my fingernails. \"Half business is better than
\nno business. Bali is again smiling.\"<\/p>\n
Earlier that day, I had purchased a beautiful, brass Balinese
\nbuddha for my water garden back in Melbourne. Indonesian
\nchildren, on their first day of school holidays, were everywhere
\nlaughing in the streets. Many were shopping with their parents,
\nspending their Galungan bonuses on flowers, food and traditional
\ngifts for the much-anticipated festivities.<\/p>\n
So when the first bomb exploded in the packed Kuta Square
\nShopping Center at 7:30 p.m., many of the victims were Indonesian
\nparents and children.<\/p>\n
I was with my husband at our cousin's beachside villa in
\nKerobokan three kilometers down the beach. We had discussed
\ndining on seafood at the popular Jimbaran Beach cafes. However,
\nour guest was late, much to my husband's irritation. I was about
\nto phone our guest when we heard a loud, dull noise and the villa
\nshook.<\/p>\n
\"That was a big firework,\" I commented. I picked up the phone.
\nThe line was dead. Within a minute, the villa again shook. \"Maybe
\nsomeone has crashed their car into the compound gates.\"<\/p>\n
I went to the front gates and asked the security to find us a
\ncab and to tell our absent guest -- if he showed up -- that we
\nwould meet him at the restaurant. I could tell by their faces
\nthat something was wrong.<\/p>\n
\"Sorry Miss Jodie. You cannot go to Jimbaran,\" said Agung.
\n\"There has been more bombs and the police have blocked the roads.
\nPlease don't go there and please do not go to Kuta.\"<\/p>\n
We headed for the nearby Kudeta Restaurant on Seminyak beach.
\nSecurity was on high alert. No cars were allowed in. Everyone was
\npersonally scanned by security. A small army of private guards
\nwith metal detectors slowly walked across the beach, scanning
\nevery centimeter of sand.<\/p>\n
Anyone taking a romantic stroll along the water's edge was
\nbathed in massive spotlights and Indonesians with backpacks were
\nphysically stopped and searched.<\/p>\n
An argument broke out between an Australian journalist and an
\nIndonesian man when the Aussie demanded the Indonesian open his
\nbackpack as he entered the up-market restaurant. The Indonesian
\nturned out to be a local journalist.<\/p>\n
Australian hostess Lucy Lazita was doing her best to keep calm
\namong the dining tourists and expatriate residents as news spread
\nof the bombs. Our Balinese waitress struggled to maintain her
\ncomposure as she told us her sister worked at Kuta Square, and
\nthat she couldn't find out if she was okay until her shift
\nfinished at 1 a.m.<\/p>\n
We joined a table with the Australian head chef, Robert, and a
\ngroup of Aussie tourists including Adele Andrews and Nicky
\nRowsell of Elwood and their Kew friend Lisa Hammond.<\/p>\n
\"It's not going to stop me coming back to Bali,\" said Adele. I
\nbelieve when your time's up, it's up. We are not going to leave.
\nWe are going to stay and help.\"<\/p>\n
Lucy told me that the first bomb had gone off in Raja's
\nrestaurant in Kuta Square, and the other two at Jimbaran Beach
\ncafes beside the Intercontinental Hotel. They had found another
\ntwo bombs in the sand at Jimbaran that had failed to go off, and
\nanother, at Hard Rock Hotel, that the bomb squad had diffused.<\/p>\n
\"It could have been much worse,\" she said.<\/p>\n
I immediately arranged a driver and headed to Sanglah Hospital
\nin Denpasar with Agung, who would not let me out of his sight.<\/p>\n
\"If anything happens to you, I'll have to answer to your
\ncousin. I think your new buddha is protecting you,\" he said.<\/p>\n
At 9 p.m., the scene outside the hospital was one of fear and
\ndesperation. Thousands of people had converged on Sanglah,
\nfrantically trying to locate missing friends and family.<\/p>\n
Three giant whiteboards had already been erected listing the
\nMissing, Injured and Dead. As the night wore on, fleets of
\nambulances and cars ferried the victims to Sanglah. The lists
\ngrew longer with every hour.<\/p>\n
People covered in burns and cuts, some missing limbs and many
\nIndonesians carrying blood-soaked children flooded the halls and
\nwalkways between wards.<\/p>\n
Tourists and locals, some with medical training, volunteered
\nto help in any way they could.<\/p>\n
I pushed patients on hospital beds between the Australian-
\nbuilt Intesive Care Unit (ICU) and the Burns Unit upstairs. I
\nheld up drips and I learned how to switch off the alarm on the
\nICU monitors when someone died, then fetch someone from the
\nmorgue next door to move the body so we could bring in another
\npatient.<\/p>\n
On the ramp between units, I met another Aussie volunteer, Kim
\nButler. She had helped out during the 2002 blasts and was back
\nagain to lend a hand. As we walked up the ramp, our beach sandals
\nbegan slipping on the blood that trailed from top to bottom.<\/p>\n
Kim was holding up Nicholas Scott's drip as he was being moved
\nbetween surgery and burns units. Nicholas, from Cairns in Far
\nNorth Queensland, was the best eyewitness the police had to the
\nKuta Square bombing.<\/p>\n
\"This guy walked past our table in the Raja's restaurant and
\nthrew a small white package the size of a small house brick on
\nour table,\" said Nicholas. \"I called to him, `Hey mate! We didn't
\norder that'. He turned and looked at me then yelled something. I
\nrecognized 'Allah' and `Bomb'. Then there was an explosion and
\nthe next morning I woke up in this hospital.\"<\/p>\n
There were two types of bombs: three in backpacks and the
\nothers were of the small white parcel variety. Both contained
\nexplosives filled with thousands of ball bearings designed to
\nmaim and to kill.<\/p>\n
A crisis center had been set up beside the whiteboards, and
\nstunned crowds watched as names, ages, nationalities and hotels
\nwere scrawled up by volunteers. Twelve hours after the blasts, 23
\nAustralians were listed on the boards; the majority of the names
\nwere Indonesian, and many of these were children.<\/p>\n
The first name on the Dead board was Brendan Fitzgerald, 16,
\nAustralian. He was eating at Raja's with his father and sister at
\nthe table beside Nicholas'. His father Terry was considered
\ncritical and spent most of the night in surgery having, among
\nother procedures, his spleen removed.<\/p>\n
His daughter Jessica, 13, was in ICU and surgery, also
\ncritical.<\/p>\n
As the mother of a 13-year-old girl and also a Fitzgerald by
\nmarriage, I felt a special connection with her. She lay in a
\nhospital bed, her young face and arms covered in burns. I asked
\nthe doctor how she was doing, and he replied, not well.<\/p>\n
Jessica had been found in the smoldering Raja's ruins by an
\nAustralian nurse called Melissa, who had brought her straight to
\nthe hospital. They had lost her once during the night, and he
\ncouldn't tell me if she or her father would pull through.<\/p>\n
Jessica's arms were wrapped in bandages from her shoulders to
\nher wrists. I held her scratched hand and stroked the flowers
\npainted on her fingernails.<\/p>\n
\"Hey Jessica, we have matching fingernails,\" I whispered. The
\ndoctor told me she probably couldn't hear me, but that I should
\nkeep talking to her and the other Aussies because sometimes, it
\ncould simply take a familiar accent to bring them around.<\/p>\n
Friends of the Fitzgerald family from Busselton WA came to the
\nhospital and rallied around them, whispering words of
\nencouragement. When Jessica finally opened her eyes, there were
\ntears of happiness on everyone's faces.<\/p>\n
\"I feel like crap,\" croaked Jessica. \"I bet I look like crap.\"<\/p>\n
Family friend Bev Dawson assured her that she didn't look too
\nbad. \"You've got a few cuts and scratches,\" said Bev. \"Dad's
\nright beside you and he's got a few cuts and scratches just like
\nyou, love, but you are going to be okay.\"<\/p>\n
Jessica was facing the bomb when it exploded. Her father took
\nthe brunt of the blast across his back and lay in the next bed,
\nstill critical. His lips had turned blue. Australian nurse Julie
\nSpencer covered him with a warm blanket. \"That's what happens
\nwhen the body goes into shock,\" said Julie.<\/p>\n
Julie and her fiance Darren Hodge, an Air Ambulance officer,
\nfrom Newport, Victoria, had come to Bali with their two children
\nand parents to finally tie the knot on Oct. 7. They still planned
\nto go ahead with the wedding, despite the rest of their wedding
\nguests canceling flights.<\/p>\n
Throughout Sunday, Jessica came in and out of consciousness.
\nHer first question was: \"Where is my brother? Is my brother OK?\"<\/p>\n
I explained that lots of people had been hurt and they had
\nbeen taken to four different hospitals, and that we hadn't found
\nhim yet. It was a line we would repeat many times that first day
\nas Jessica would ask over and over about her brother.<\/p>\n
Hospital staff felt it was better to wait until her mother and
\ngrandmother arrived, so she would have more support when the bad
\nnews had to be broken.<\/p>\n
I talked to Jessica about our shared love of music and
\npromised to score free tickets for her and some friends to a
\nPerth concert. I told her about my own 13-year-old daughter
\nMadison, and discovered both were keen net-ballers and loved Kath
\n& Kim.<\/p>\n
\"Look at moi, Jessica. Look at moi!\" That got a smile. I told
\nher I had a net-ball signed by Kath, Kim and Shazza, who were our
\nneighbors in the Melbourne suburb of Elwood. We compared the
\nmatching flowers on our fingernails.<\/p>\n
\"How much did you pay for yours? I got mine for Rp 70,000,\"
\nshe said.<\/p>\n
I told her she had bargained a good price. Then, yet again,
\nshe asked if I could go and look for her brother. I said I would
\ntry, and walked outside the ICU before I began to cry.<\/p>\n
Under the covered walkway, Indonesian parents held their badly
\ninjured children waiting for their turns to see a doctor. Many
\nwere covered in burns and were bleeding from embedded glass and
\nball bearings used in the bombs.<\/p>\n
I sat with a husband and wife who were holding their toddler
\nson wrapped in a red sarong. The baby had cuts down one side of
\nhis face. I squeezed his little hand and tried to smile bravely
\nas tears flowed down my face.<\/p>\n
In perfect English, the woman told me she was selling
\npostcards with her baby son in Kuta Square when the bomb
\nexploded. The husband opened the red sarong. The child's left
\nfoot was missing and what remained of his leg was a charred mess.
\nThe mother held my hand and we wept together.<\/p>\n
\"Today, Bali cries,\" she said.<\/p>\n
Inside the ICU, friends of the Fitzgerald's wondered how
\nBrendan Fitzgerald could be listed as dead, since none of them
\nhad identified his body now laying in a yellow plastic bag in the
\nmorgue with the number \"1\" written in black texta.<\/p>\n
\"I think we're still hoping that it's all a big mistake and
\nBrendan will turn up somewhere alive,\" said a friend.<\/p>\n
I counted 26 yellow plastic bags in the morgue. Twelve were
\nunidentified, nine were Indonesian, one was Japanese and three
\nwere listed as Australian: Brendan Fitzgerald, Jennifer
\nWilliamson and Colin Zwilsky.<\/p>\n
Three others were in smaller, separate bags. The mortician
\ntold me these were the suicide bombers and that the police had
\njust come to photograph the decapitated heads.<\/p>\n
\"They are remarkably intact considering...,\" he said.<\/p>\n
Outside the morgue I met Steven Nye, an employee of Colin
\nZwilsky. He told me Colin's wife Fiona was listed as missing, but
\nhe was quite sure she was one of the `unidentified'. He was
\ndesperately trying to locate the Zwilsky's two sons: Issac, 17,
\nand Ben, 14. The boys were not dining with their parents at
\nJimbaran beach at the time of the blast, but they could not be
\nfound.<\/p>\n
At 11:30 a.m. Darren Hodge and I discussed how incredible it
\nwas that nobody from the Australian Consulate had come to Sanglah
\nHospital. Many of the 23 Aussie victims were able to leave, yet
\nno one had come to answer our questions about the evacuation
\nprocedure, or who to contact, or where we should go.<\/p>\n
I tried to call the consulate from the nurse's desk phone in
\nICU, but only got a recorded message saying the consulate was
\nclosed for the holidays.<\/p>\n
Government leaders from Jakarta, senior police and foreign
\nembassy staff began arriving to visit the wounded. Within an
\nhour, I met President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Megawati -- who
\ntold me her grandmother was Balinese and so she had a special
\nlove for the island -- the health minister, the tourism minister,
\nthe national police chief, the British Consul-General, theh
\nBelgian Consul-General and, finally, Australian Health Minister
\nTony Abbott, who was holidaying with his family.<\/p>\n
I told Abbott that nobody from the consulate had come to check
\non the Australians at Sanglah. He said he was \"pretty sure
\nsomebody had\".<\/p>\n
\"Maybe they were locals employed by the consulate,\" suggested
\nAbbott.<\/p>\n
I told him I had been at the hospital all night and all day
\nand if anyone came to see the Aussies, they never made themselves
\nknown to any of the patients, staff or volunteers. Abbott said
\nthat Qantas was sending two jets for any Australians who wanted
\nto leave -- later qualified as \"any Aussies with Qantas tickets
\nwho wanted to leave\" -- and a medically outfitted Hercules to
\nmedevac the seriously injured.<\/p>\n
Jessica and her father were top of the priority list.<\/p>\n
Although Jessica's condition had stabilized, she was not moved
\nto the Burns Unit, as they wanted to keep father and daughter
\ntogether in ICU. The doctors also didn't want to run the risk of
\na kind-hearted person offering Jessica their condolences for the
\ntragic loss of her brother.<\/p>\n
SOS Retrievals had told us of their evacuation plan. Terry
\nneeded urgent medical attention and would go at 4 p.m. Jessica
\nwould follow him at 11 p.m., by which time the 250 media camped
\noutside would be more manageable.<\/p>\n
Year 8 school friend Peter Dabreu attempted to get a smile out
\nof Jessica by telling her how famous she had become, and how many
\nTV channels around the world were talking about her. \"Gordon's
\ngonna have an even bigger crush on you than ever,\" he teased.<\/p>\n
\"Is Gordon your boyfriend?\" I asked Jessica.<\/p>\n
\"No way,\" she said. \"I don't have a boyfriend.\"<\/p>\n
I asked her, if she could have anyone in the whole world to
\ndeliver her flowers, who would she choose?<\/p>\n
\"The Streets. I just love The Streets.\" That is, the band, not
\nThe Streets of ice-cream fame.<\/p>\n
Peter left the ICU and returned swiftly with a portable CD
\nplayer, headphones and The Streets' latest album. Jessica told me
\nthe morphine was making her feel sick. Her injuries were such
\nthat she could not turn her head to see her father in the next
\nbed.<\/p>\n
She was beginning to suspect that things were worse than we'd
\ntold her: \"If Dad's in the next bed, and all he's got are cuts
\nand scratches like me, then why isn't he talking?\"<\/p>\n
I told her they had also given him morphine to make him sleep.
\nTo prove it, I took a photo of her father using my mobile
\ntelephone and held it up to Jessica's eye-level.<\/p>\n
Seeing the photo of her sleeping father relaxed the teenager
\nsomewhat. I told her that her mother and grandmother were on
\ntheir way and should be arriving within a few hours.<\/p>\n
\"Please, will you go and find out which hospital they took my
\nbrother to?\"<\/p>\n
I promised to try my best. Outside the ICU, patients were no
\nlonger waiting for doctors. The Indonesians outside consisted of
\nmothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and friends of those lying in
\nthe morgue. We cried for Bali together.<\/p>\n
On Sunday afternoon, I met another Aussie volunteer, a
\nMelbourne doctor married to singer Katie Underwood -- the one
\nfrom Bardot who really can sing. He and Katie were holidaying in
\nBali and he had come to the hospital to help. He told me Terry
\nhad finally regained consciousness a few minutes ago.<\/p>\n
\"The first thing he asked was about his son. We've given
\nJessica something to sleep.\"<\/p>\n
Sleep. I had not had any in two days, and suddenly I felt
\nincredibly tired. Agung and my driver had spent most of the day
\nsleeping in the car outside.<\/p>\n
I returned to our Kerobakan villa where my worried husband was
\nwaiting with our friend Katot, who had come to give me a massage.
\nWithin 10 minutes, I was fast asleep. Three hours later, I awoke
\ncrying from a nightmare. Unfortunately, it was not a bad dream;
\nit was reality.<\/p>\n
I could sleep no more and turned on the local news. Three
\ndecapitated heads were being shown in gruesome close-up. They
\nplayed an amateur video that captured the suicide bomber wearing
\na black T-shirt and carrying backpack as he walked through Raja's
\nrestaurant.<\/p>\n
I tried to find Jessica, Terry and Brendan among the diners,
\nbut suddenly everything blows up. A bloodied Japanese woman is
\ncrying as she wipes her bleeding face with a red-stained
\nhandkerchief. I know her, she is in bed MS117 at Sanglah.<\/p>\n
An Asian man with an American accent pleads with the
\ncameraman, \"Please help me! Please help!\" He was Shawn, a
\nVietnamese-American in bed MS106. A Raja's waiter, he died
\nyesterday in ICU.<\/p>\n
Cut to the Kuta Square clean-up site, Indonesians without
\ngloves are picking up body parts and throwing them into rattan
\nbaskets. Close-up on a severed foot. I thought of the little
\nBalinese baby and his parents.<\/p>\n
Today, we cry for Bali. Again.<\/p>\n
I had taken the baby and his parents to the Burns Unit. I
\nneeded to find out how the little fellow was doing. I quickly
\ndressed and returned to the hospital after stopping at the flower
\nmarket to buy 100 long-stemmed red roses. Most of the foreigners
\nhad been evacuated.<\/p>\n
Today, I would spend the day visiting the Indonesian victims
\nand delivering roses.<\/p>\n
I needed to keep my brain busy.<\/p>\n
I needed to stop crying.<\/p>\n
I needed to see Bali smile again.<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/bali-cries-again-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }