Number of missing in Aceh revised down

Number of missing in Aceh revised down

Jerry Norton, Reuters/Jakarta

Officials here have slashed by 60 percent their estimate of the number of people missing in Aceh province after the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami, because of better data collection.

According to the latest numbers, 37,063 are now listed as missing from 93,458 early this week.

A government disaster center statement issued late on Thursday gave a count of 126,915 for those killed by the quake and tsunami, almost 200 more than in a statement on Tuesday.

The change in the missing figure largely reflects identification of people who had been listed as missing but were actually among those displaced when the quake and the tsunami it triggered destroyed their homes, a spokesman for the government's disaster coordinating operation said on Friday.

The spokesman from Indo Pacific, which handles media relations for the relief effort, said since March 26 there had been a concerted effort to gather and collate identification details of people displaced by the disaster.

Displaced persons "now have to start giving their details and register their contact details ... and that's why the number of missing people has dropped significantly," said the spokesman, who declined to be named.

More than 500,000 people were displaced by the disaster. Though many now live in camps run by government or aid organizations, others stay in ramshackle communities of tents and shacks on hillsides or in forests, or staying with relatives and friends.

For weeks, data updates have said "it is believed that some of those previously thought missing are confirmed dead, are among the IDPs" (displaced persons), or have left Aceh province".

Since December's Indian Ocean quake sent a tsunami crashing onto the shores of Aceh in Indonesia's far northwest, smashing to bits homes and buildings, estimates of the missing and dead varied widely, especially in the first few weeks after the disaster.

The government then switched to a conservative approach in its count of the dead, listing only the number of bodies recovered and buried. It has been less clear about how it arrived at estimates of the missing.