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Alexander's Horse
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Panmunjon, hands up!
Jan 1970
time: 15:23
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Ming, Hope you don't mind the second thread but this story is bigger than Stefu's conspiracy thread.
quote:
More than 200 Australians still missing
October 14 2002
· More than 200 Australians unaccounted for
· First victims arrive in Sydney
· Australian dies on flight to Darwin
· Bush calls attack cowardly
· ASIO team flies to Bali
· Australian tells of five teammates dying
More than 200 Australians remain unaccounted for following yesterday's devastating terrorist blast in Bali, a spokesman for Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said today.
The spokesman said commercial airlines were putting extra flights to bring home Australian tourists while further RAAF C-130 aircraft carrying injured would arrive in Darwin this morning.
"The death toll overall is believed to be in excess of 180. We understand that 13 Australians have died, although those figures are fluid," he told AAP.
"The department is working to clarify those numbers as the situation stabilises. There is believed to be 110 Australians injured and a further 220 unaccounted for at this stage."
The spokesman said Australian officials were working closely with Indonesian authorities.
He said the Australian Consulate-General in Bali had organised one medical evacuation of five of the most critically injured who arrived in Perth early this morning aboard a BAC-111 aircraft.
The Australian Defence Force had deployed five C-130 aircraft with medical teams to transport patients from Bali.
The first landed in Darwin this morning with 15 on board, one of whom died en route.
A second C-130 is expected in Darwin later this morning with 22 on board.
The spokesman said Garuda had put on an an additional two flights from Bali today while Qantas had scheduled three extra flights to Sydney today and one to Perth tomorrow.
First victims arrive in Sydney
Sydney hospitals have taken in 13 people injured in the Bali bomb blasts.
Two aircraft carrying injured Australians landed at Sydney airport this morning, where a fleet of NSW ambulances were waiting to rush them to hospitals.
A NSW Ambulance spokesman said 13 of the injured were on the first flight, with a further six on the second.
"Twelve (on the first flight) were taken to St George Hospital for treatment, eight of which were stretcher patients and were not able to walk for one reason or another," he said.
"Another one went to Royal North Shore Hospital."
He said the six aboard the second aircraft had minor injuries.
"They were examined by NSW Ambulance officers and were allowed to leave to go and see their own doctors," the spokesman said.
Two NSW Ambulance officers left for Bali last night with a MediVac team, and a further four left about 6.30am (AEST) today to help bring patients back, he said.
CareFlight spokesman Ian Badham earlier said about half of the patients arriving in Sydney had burns, ranging from superficial to serious, while one woman had a fractured skull.
Others had cuts and bruises.
Mr Badham said those injured had been accompanied on one flight by a CareFlight trauma doctor and paramedic, who had stabilised them for the trip home.
Australian victim dies on flight to Darwin
One of the first 15 injured Australians flown by the RAAF from Bali after a suspected terrorist bomb blast died en route to Darwin today.
The Hercules left Denpasar last night only half full of casualties because some of the victims were too ill to delay take-off until more arrived, a defence spokesman said.
More than 24 hours after a bomb destroyed two bars in Kuta, a victim died during the three-hour flight to Darwin.
The plane touched down at 1.45am CST (0215 AEST) at Darwin airport where nine ambulances and an ambulance bus were ready to take them to the Royal Darwin Hospital.
The mostly young patients, all of them burn victims, were carried, pushed in wheelchairs or walked unaided across the tarmac.
"I can tell you the first 15 victims of the tragedy have arrived and sadly one of those died in transit," hospital medical superintendent Len Notaras told media shortly after the victims arrived.
As many as four were in critical conditions while six or seven would be well enough to go home within days.
With up to 100 victims expected to be flown by the RAAF to the hospital in about 12 hours, Dr Notaras said the first arrivals were not the worst injured.
"We expect that there are still some very serious cases to come," he said.
The 11 men and three women were all Australians, coming from states including Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.
Future medical evacuations were expected to also include American, Canadian and New Zealand patients.
Many of the patients appeared stunned as they were ferried to the hospital.
Their injuries included fractured limbs, shrapnel wounds and impaling on wood and glass.
"The sheer magnitude of what has actually occurred is going to take some considerable time to sink in for a lot of people including ourselves at the hospital," Dr Notaras said.
"It has been our own, in a sense, 11th of September; it's a tragedy."
A man, who gave only his first name, Mick, waited at the airport fence for hours hoping to glimpse his mate, a 25-year-old father of two, among the injured.
His mate, a Top End station hand who he would name only as Wayne, had gone to Bali on Friday for a four-day break with friends.
"Even if he gets carried off a plane on a stretcher, he's here. I just want to find him," Mick said.
The next Hercules was due at 6.40am CST (0710 AEST).
Federal police and ASIO team head to Bali
Australian Federal Police and a team from ASIO flew to Bali to help Indonesians investigate the bombing, which experts believe to be the work of Indonesian terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
Federal cabinet's national security committee will meet this morning to discuss Australia's response to the attack.
Prime Minister John Howard said Australia would take a measured response.
"It is not an occasion for hot headed responses, but certainly not an occasion to imagine that if you roll yourself up into a little ball all these horrible things will go away," he told Channel Nine.
George Bush condemns attack as cowardly
International leaders condemned the attack and US President George Bush offered help to Indonesia to investigate the attack, and called it "a cowardly act designed to create terror and chaos".
More accounts of the victims emerged this morning, with friends telling how five members of Sydney's Coogee Wombats rugby league team had died in the blast at the Sari and Padi nightclubs in Kuta.
Australian tells of five teammates dying
Australian Brett Patterson told today of how five members of the Coogee Wombats rugby league team died in the blast - while others missed death by seconds.
Mr Patterson, who was travelling with the players from Sydney, said 11 members of the amateur club were on holiday in Bali's Kuta beach when they decided to go to the Sari Club last night.
Seconds after some of the group had left the building, the two bombs exploded.
"They got to the corner and then it went off and they turned around and..." Patterson told PA, unable to finish.
The five left inside the club have been identified among the dead, he said.
Patterson was having dinner nearby and was about to join his friends for a drink when the blasts ripped through the area.
The 32-year-old spent the next hours trawling the eight nearby hospitals and the morgue in the capital Denpasar looking for his 26-year-old friend who is missing.
The two men are both from Dubbo in New South Wales and the young man's brother and two sisters have flown out from the town to help search for him.
Patterson said they were expecting the worst.
He described the scenes inside the morgue as "horrific".
"There's just bodies ... and torsos and limbs," he said.
The shockwaves caused by the two explosions could be felt 2km away, he said.
It caused the walls of his hotel around the corner to shake and other buildings in the area had their windows blown out.
"We got back to the room and it felt like someone was banging on the shutters," he said, adding that there was now a crater around the area where the car bomb had exploded.
People in the area were still in shock, Patterson said.
In Denpasar, Bali's main city, the airport was thronged by stunned, mostly young travellers cutting short their holidays and desperate to go home after the most terrifying night of their lives.
Crowds camped out near a McDonalds, working their mobile phones to make hard-to-get airline bookings. Many had spent the night on the beach, terrified after the blasts to go near built-up areas.
AAP
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Here's a link to other stories.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002...4222719974.html
The media here is saying its one of the biggest terrorist attacks ever in terms of loss of life, certainly the biggest behind 9/11, or related to it.
Mostly young holiday makers were killed and injured. I sense the country is numb and in shock today.
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Pekka
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em seu burro dos pais!
Feb 2002
time: 07:23
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I trust they find the sick people who are behind this and justice is served. This is sheer madness. Only a mad man is able to do this, this can't be justified in any way no matter how hard you try to look for perspectives.
This looks like a big and planned terrorist act targeting western youth, considering where it was done and when.
This will also do lots of damage to tourism in these countries, so logic behind this gets even more fuzzy.
I think my future plans in travelling will limit to Europe and other western counries for a long time.
I don't mean to be rude or anything, so don't take this the wrong way. American citizens have been targeted before (and still), but at least I could see their logic. It's not a great logic to kill innocent civilians, but they had their own reasons. They don't like Americans. They have a common beef with each other. It doesn't justify killing innocent people in any way of course.
Now it just seems to be enough to kill western people for some groups, and spread horror. I can't see the logic any more. It has become more 'jihad' then. It's starting to tear the world in two sides if it goes on like this in the near future. This worries me a lot.
Americans are on their way in the war on terrorism, targetting is sometimes argued. But if these terrorist groups seems to be having a good time targetting jsut anyone western, then the rest of the western world is getting with Americans stronger and starts dealing with these pukes, and if their governments can't get then in a leash, we all start contributing to the war more and justifying it, since they can't (or are not willing) to take a very strong position on preventing these things, and when they get on the way, they get on the way.
This won't happen tomorrow, but if this madness won't stop, it will. I hope this won't happen.
Even our peaceful army now is starting to have troops that are able to operate 'in different conditions' which I translate outside the country. Well, this will be another factor for pro-nato people in here when we decide if we want to become a full member or not.
Solidarity to people who have been affected by this act of madness.
edit: And taking under consideration that the US is about to attack Iraq, why would the terrorists (if they are muslims that is) want to start blasting now? Timing is the worst possible. They would be a lot wiser, if they'd just cool it down for a moment, for Iraq to get maximum chances for peace with the US. And they should know these kind of acts only gives the US more allies and stronger coalition, thus making their situation worse. Do they even think (terrorists) that they actually have a chance in all out war against western civilization? Fools.
Last edited by Pekka on 14-10-2002 at 06:03
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Alexander's Horse
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Panmunjon, hands up!
Jan 1970
time: 15:23
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Here's some eye witness accounts. The only equivalent I can think of is the car big bombings in Norther Ireland, some of the bombings in Israel.
quote:
People were burning, dying. It was an inferno'
By Philip Cornford, Brigid Delaney, Elisabeth Sexton and agencies
October 14 2002
Both nightclubs were bursting at the seams. Hot, sweaty, noisy, they pulsated with a frantic life force. Mostly, they were young, single Australians on the make, in beautiful and sensuous Bali for a blowout.
None of the patrons blasting Saturday night into oblivion at the Sari or Paddy's Irish Pub, the two most popular nightspots along the raunchy Jalan Legian, could have had a hint of the disaster about to befall them.
This was Kuta, playground of Denpasar, a place where the excesses were alcoholic and sexual and entirely permitted.
At Sari's, aka SCs, the most popular drink was the local Bintang beer, served in huge bongs. With a high thatched roof which let in the rain, it had an uneasy Balinese touch, out of step with the modern beat. It also had the distinction of refusing entry to locals.
Paddy's was directly across the JL Legian, the city's busiest entertainment strip, lined with bars and clubs and small shops catering to tourists. A two-storey structure described as a "cross between a Gilligan's Island hut and a Smurf village house", it showcased bottle-juggling bartenders, a classic rock band downstairs and techno groove in the huge upstairs room.
After 11 on Saturday night, both bars were full to bursting. Among drinkers at the Sari Club were Australian Rules football teams from Melbourne, Geelong, Perth and Adelaide on season-end trips.
Twenty-five players from the Platypi Rugby Union club from Forbes in western NSW had arrived in Bali only eight hours earlier, checked into their hotel and gone straight to the famous bar.
"I reckon the place had 300 people in there and probably 250 were Australians," said Simon Quayle, coach of the Kingsley Football Club in Perth, who was there with 19 fellow members. Twenty players from Sturt Football club in Adelaide were also in the bar.
Patrons coming late were unable to get in. They were the lucky ones.
About 11.20am, a car parked outside Paddy's exploded, blowing up in the front of the bar. A few moments later, a second blast, described as much bigger, tore open Sari's.
This explosion blasted a hole in the street a metre deep and 10 metres across. Police believe that it, too, was a car bomb. It cracked the walls of buildings several kilometres away. Debris was hurled further afield. Cars and moped taxis burst into flames.
Footballers from the Melbourne Demons were walking along JL Legian. The club manager, Danny Corcoran, said: "A huge explosion blew them off their feet." None of the 20 players was injured.
Fireballs exploded into Sari's and Paddy's. "Sari's went up in a millisecond," said Simon Quayle. "I can't believe I'm alive. Eight of our boys are missing."
Blair Robertson, 23, of Port Fairy on the Victorian west coast, said: "There was a massive explosion ... from the front of the club. It was the biggest bang you can handle."
The patrons nearest the front doors of both bars died instantly, incinerated. Others were saved by the sheer density of the crowd. But no one escaped that fierce blast of flame. It seared eyes, flesh.
Mr Robertson and four friends were at the rear of Sari's. He had arrived that day, and they had been in the bar for 20 minutes.
"We had a little bit of space. It was pretty crowded and a lot of people who died would have been in the front of the nightclub," he said. "I was facing the front of the nightclub. I saw all the television screens around the bar explode. I saw heaps of people burning and dying around me. It was an inferno. I saw one guy whose leg had been blown open - he couldn't walk - he was just lying there screaming. I saw another man with severe facial burns - it was hard to tell if he was dead or alive. There was so much screaming."
Mr Quayle told ABC radio: "It was like a bloody war movie. One bloke ... looked like a bit of wood, that's how burnt he was. A few of us helped this German lady out. She had no clothes on ... maybe it was burning and she ripped them off. You just think about it and you break into tears."
Then, in both bars, the roofs fell in, a fiery rain of debris. Those who were still alive were trapped. In the panic, smoke, pain and heat, there was no obvious escape. For those who got out, life was a miracle. Most suffered excruciating burns and injuries.
Mr Robertson and his mates dived under a table. "The second storey [internal roof] collapsed on us. There were lots of people yelling and screaming."
Flames blocked all exits. Mr Robertson said about 60 patrons rushed an internal stair case leading onto the external roof.
"People kept tripping over. I couldn't pay too much attention to what was going on because I was looking out for my friends - I was really worried that we would get separated - so I kept making sure that we were all together."
David Hodder, one of the 25 Platypi rugby club players who were in Sari's, said: "The second blast knocked everyone to the ground. When I came to, the roof was down, with flames flying out of it, and people running over me."
Mr Hodder and his mates scaled a 3-metre wall to get out. "We just tried to get as many people out as we could before it was too late. They didn't all make it."
Three of his mates didn't get out. Four who did were badly burnt with blistered arms, legs, backs and necks.
Those who climbed to Sari's external roof faced a new trial. Mr Robertson and his friends leapt off the roof of the nightclub onto an adjoining building, but found the tiles were burning and slipping off. "We jumped from one building roof to another
. The nightclub collapsed five minutes later. Eventually we landed on a balcony, climbed into a room, then took the stairs onto the street. Outside there were just people lined up on the side of the road covered in blood. It was horrific. I haven't slept since. I can't."
A British tourist, Matt Noyce, was in Sari's when the bomb went off. "Outside it was awful, it was like a scene you'd see from Vietnam. There were bodies everywhere."
A French photographer, Cyril Terrien, said he had "never seen such an appalling thing. There are charred and mangled bodies everywhere, it is unbelievable," he told the BBC.
The conflagration spread rapidly to adjoining buildings. Twenty-seven were destroyed. Shopkeepers and their families were incinerated.
West Australians Fiona Lewis, 44, and her partner, Kevin Upton, 34, were in a nearby lane.
"No one got out the front of either club," said Ms Lewis. "We ran down to help, but there were so many people in the street, burned, injured or dead. One woman had lost the whole bottom half of her body. A man was crawling up the lane. He had no feet."
Richard Poore, a 37-year-old New Zealander who works in television, started to film the scene.
"I saw limbs lying on the ground. I got to the stage where I couldn't film any more because it made me feel physically ill. I've never seen anything like it in 12 years of reporting."
Inside the White Rose Hotel, Sydneysiders Marion Houghton, 43, from Little Bay, and her sister, Gail McCarthy, nursed the victims. "They were in agony. We got mattresses and wrapped them in wet sheets and blankets. The burns were so bad we were afraid to touch them. There were two Australians ... both in dreadful condition."
With the street ablaze, ambulances could not get to the White Rose until a rear wall was knocked down. It took three hours. "How they suffered," Ms Houghton said.
A police officer said: "It's difficult to identify people because they have been completely charred."
A Canadian who lives in Bali, Howard Klein, said: "There are bodies actually still piled up here waiting to be taken away, there was a lot of damage, a lot of people hurt."
The morning after, Australians began the heartbreaking search for the missing.
Simon Quayle was looking for eight missing mates. Back in Perth, his wife, Narelle, said families of the travelling footballers were waiting anxiously for more news.
"Simon said to me it's just so emotional, the boys that are together are just together and they're obviously consoling one another and doing whatever they have to do to get through it," she said. "But he said to me they came as a team and they're going to leave as a team and they're not going to leave until they at least know what's happened and where the other boys are."
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002...4222684262.html
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Dr Strangelove
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I wonder if the missing Australians aren't those Australian tourists on Bali who haven't yet checked in with the consulate. How many people could have been in just two nightclubs?
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asleepathewheel
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listening too long to one song
Mar 2002
time: 00:23
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This is just too sad for all those tourists. Reminds me (slightly) of that attack on the pyramids tourists a few years back, though that was on a smaller scale, IIRC.
I was seriously considering Bali as a place to get married in late May 2003. I think this has shifted my focus to places closer to the US.
I just couldn't put my fiance in such a situation. I wouldn't care if it was me, I've been to more dangerous places while traveling alone (Sri lanka, Pakistan), but to put a loved one in danger, no way.
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Gods Pet Monkey
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Melting away on the East Coast of Australia
Nov 2001
time: 15:23
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quote:
Originally posted by JohnT
A lot, Dr. Strangelove.
I am so sorry this happened, AH. If you may, please list some Australian organizations that are set up to help these victims so that we can contribute.
Didn't the US gov't warn Australia that there was a strong likelihood of a terrorist attack against Australian citizens a few days ago? Seems that I heard something to that effect on NPR Friday night.
Regardless, my condolences. |
The Red Cross and Salvation Army have been doing a lot of the work both on the scene and for the victims and their families, and as always need contributions to help not only there, but elsewhere in the world to. Money to these sorts of organisations (and Amnesty too) is always better then focusing on organisations based on one particular event (I feel all warm and fuzzy inside now  ), whats more, the Red Cross and Salvation Army will probably do 2x more then any organisation created after this for the victims and their family.
As for the warning, the USA did warn us of potential terrorist attacks, but said they were most likely to go after Australian interests and particularly energy (power stations, etc.). I expect the government was fearful for our oil production (it’s not very widely known, but Australia is self sufficient in its oil production, and yet petrol still costs a fortune). I don’t think anyone had expected an attack on Indonesia which was aimed primarily at westerners, with a large toll of Australians (as it appears currently anyway), and it’s also a little difficult to protect someone else’s country (which when you think about it makes it a perfect target for such attacks).
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Gods Pet Monkey
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Melting away on the East Coast of Australia
Nov 2001
time: 15:23
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quote:
Originally posted by asleepathewheel
This is just too sad for all those tourists. Reminds me (slightly) of that attack on the pyramids tourists a few years back, though that was on a smaller scale, IIRC.
I was seriously considering Bali as a place to get married in late May 2003. I think this has shifted my focus to places closer to the US.
I just couldn't put my fiance in such a situation. I wouldn't care if it was me, I've been to more dangerous places while traveling alone (Sri lanka, Pakistan), but to put a loved one in danger, no way. |
Come to Australia 
Sure, we are not Bali, but we got some pretty neat stuff too  . But if you’re looking for a tropical setting, most pacific islands would do the trick, you could also use one of the many places on the Great Barrier Reef (which BTW, is absolutely beautiful)
There we go, that’s my contribution to the Australian economy for the year 
On a more serious note asleepathewheel has shown the detrimental effect that this will have on Bali's, and in turn, Indonesia’s tourism industry (which is pretty much Bali's economy). I think its safe to say that even if something like this never happens again, people will think twice about travelling to Bali in future (at least for a few years to come), so the tourists caught up in the blast wont be the only victims here.
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asleepathewheel
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listening too long to one song
Mar 2002
time: 00:23
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quote:
Originally posted by Gods Pet Monkey
Come to Australia
Sure, we are not Bali, but we got some pretty neat stuff too . But if you’re looking for a tropical setting, most pacific islands would do the trick, you could also use one of the many places on the Great Barrier Reef (which BTW, is absolutely beautiful)
There we go, that’s my contribution to the Australian economy for the year
On a more serious note asleepathewheel has shown the detrimental effect that this will have on Bali's, and in turn, Indonesia’s tourism industry (which is pretty much Bali's economy). I think its safe to say that even if something like this never happens again, people will think twice about travelling to Bali in future (at least for a few years to come), so the tourists caught up in the blast wont be the only victims here. |
May consider Australia now. Would love to see the GBR, definately.
May still consider Bali, probably will be safe for the next few months as security will be tightened.
Also, I'm sure prices will drop, as people will pull their reservations, so will make more affordable for me.
Its so sad to see such a beautiful place turned dangerous and deadly.
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14-10-2002 05:16
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