Bowery

Disaster seems to be everywhere this week in Indonesia . In a 24-hour span, the country was slammed by a tsunami that killed at least 272 people and an erupting volcano that has left up to 30 people dead. The twin tragedies have stretched thin the country's ability to rescue the more than 400 people believed missing since the deadly 10-foot wave swept through West Sumatra . "We need to find the missing people as soon as possible. Some of them might have run away to the mountains, but many would have been swept away," Harmensyah, who heads the province's disaster management effort, told Agence France-Presse . He told the BBC that 4,000 families have been displaced. A farmer on the coast of North Pagai island said his wife and three children were killed by the wave and that he stayed alive by clinging to a piece of wood. "About 10 minutes after the quake we heard a loud, thunderous sound," the man, identified as Borinte, told AFP. "We went outside and s...

. The death toll is climbing in the wake of another Indonesia volcanic eruption Thursday night and early Friday. Sixty mile-an-hour lava flows and plumes of super-heated gas rained down on unsuspecting villagers that live in the shadow of Central Java island 's Mount Merapi . By Friday, authorities say bodies found in the white ash brought the toll to at least 122 dead. "The heat surrounded us and there was white smoke everywhere," said 47-year-old Niti Raharjo, who tried to escape on a motorbike with his son before the lava overtook them. "I saw people running, screaming in the dark, women so scared they fell unconscious," he told the Associated Press from a local hospital. The government estimates that 160,000 others fled their homes several eruptions over the last few days. "This is Merapi's worst eruption in the last 100 years," the Indonesia's top government geologist R. Sukh...