Aid to Indonesia Hampered; 'Miracle Baby' Found

(Oct. 29) -- A boat shortage is slowing efforts to ferry global aid to remote Indonesian islands hardest hit by this week's tsunami, but poignant survival stories are emerging amid all the destruction, including that of an 18-month-old boy found clinging to a tree three days after his parents were washed away.

The toddler is recovering in a health center, Australia's ABC News reported, but his parents are believed to be among more than 400 people killed when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake stirred up a tsunami that swamped the Mentawai Islands with 20-foot waves. The toll climbed today to 408 dead, with 303 still missing, CNN reported.

"We need doctors, specialists," a nurse named Anputra told The Associated Press from a hospital on one of the Mentawai Islands. Among her patients is a newly orphaned 2-month-old baby found in a storm drain. The baby's lungs are filled with fluid and his face is slashed with cuts -- but he's alive.

Another patient, a 35-year-old man, cradled his child as nurses treated his broken arm. The man, who goes by the single moniker of Sarifinus, told CBC News that when the towering wall of water came, he grabbed his two other sons and ran for higher ground. But the wave tore them both from his arms. Later, he and his wife found their only surviving son, a 5-year-old, once the waters receded.

A shortage of small boats to use for the 10-hour journey to the Mentawai Islands means food and medical supplies donated from around the world are piling up on the bigger island of Sumatra. Tons of blankets, tarps -- and body bags -- that aid groups have managed to deliver to the Mentawais are piling up there as well, with no large trucks to disperse them and roads washed away. At least six of 27 villages there have "practically been flattened," CNN quoted a local governor as saying.

"We are scrambling, along with other organizations and agencies, to get what we can as quickly as possible to the area," Phillip Charlesworth, who is with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Indonesia, told CBC. He said charities are considering a plan to drop emergency food and supplies onto the islands from planes or helicopters above. But he added that "with high seas and strong wind, that's proving difficult as well."

Four Indonesian naval ships are en route today to the islands, carrying volunteers and medicine and at least one helicopter to disperse them.

On the opposite end of the Pacific island nation, a volcano that killed 33 people a day after the tsunami is erupting again, sending plumes of ash and smoke into the sky and lava licking down its slopes. No additional injuries have been reported. Most residents are still huddled in evacuation shelters, too scared to go home.

The U.S. ambassador to Indonesia announced today that the U.S. would give $2 million in aid, CNN quoted an embassy statement as saying. The European Union has allocated more than $2 million in humanitarian assistance to survivors on the Mentawais, and Australia pledged nearly $1 million, The Jakarta Post reported.