People suddenly yelled ‘Sea water rising’
Witnesses across the areas affected by the tsunami say it hit without warning, leaving people desperate.
Azki Kurniawan, 16, said he was undergoing training with some 30 other students at Patra Comfort Hotel in the popular resort area of Carita Beach on Java when people suddenly burst into the lobby yelling: “Sea water rising!”
He told AP news agency that he wasn’t sure what was happening because he didn’t feel an earthquake. He ran to the parking lot to try to reach his motorbike but it was already flooded by the time he got there.
“Suddenly a 1m (3.3ft) wave hit me,” he said.
“I fell down, the water separated me from my bike. I was thrown into the fence of a building about 30m from the beach and held onto the fence as strong as I could, trying to resist the water, which feels like it would drag me back into the sea. I cried in fear. ‘This is a tsunami?’ I was afraid I would die.”
‘There is scope for further landslides’
Disaster risk reduction expert Carina Fearnley told BBC World News that further landslides in the area were possible.
“It is an unstable structure. A lot of material has been shifted so definitely there is scope for further landslides,” she said.
“Generally once a landslide has happened it will settle but it might change the landscape of the volcano on the side and make it more vulnerable.”
She also said scientists were working to detect where landslides can happen.
However, she added it was “very costly” to monitor all coastlines and an early warning system would be “very challenging” to establish.