The United Nations Office said in a statement on Wednesday that 430 people are confirmed dead while 1495 have been injured. The tsunami, which was caused by a volcano eruption, struck the Indonesian coast at 2.27pm GMT on Saturday. The UN statement reads: “The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that as of today, and according to the Indonesian National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), 430 people are dead, 1,495 injured, and 159 are missing.
“An estimated 22,000 people are displaced due to shelter damage and the latest tsunami alert.”
The statement added that the Indonesian Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG) warned people to stay away from the area surrounding the Anak Krakatau volcano because a new tsunami could affect the part of the island.
A state of emergency has been declared until January 4, and the spokesman for the national disaster mitigation agency Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said authorities hope it will make it easier to deploy assistance.
Mr Nugroho added that search and rescue teams were focused on the town of Sumur near the southwest tip of Java, but “the roads are damaged and clogged” and helicopters had to be deployed to carry out assessments and evacuations, with several villages still inaccessible by road.
Volunteers were having to piece together makeshift bridges out of concrete blocks after the waves washed away infrastructure along the coast.
The vast archipelago, which sits in the Ring of Fire, which runs around the Pacific basin, has suffered its worst annual death toll from disasters in more than a decade.
The latest disaster, coming during the Christmas season, evoked memories of the Indian Ocean tsunami triggered by an earthquake on December 26, 2004, which killed 226,000 people in 14 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia itself.
The waves generated engulfed fishing villages and holiday beach parties at resorts, leaving a coast littered with crushed vehicles, felled trees.
Chunks of metal, wooden beams and household items have been strewn across roads and rice fields.
The surge of seawater also left dozens of turtles, weighing several kilograms, stranded on land, and some volunteer rescuers worked to carry them back to the sea.
On Sebesi Island in the middle of the Sunda Strait, helicopters had been dispatched to evacuate residents.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who faces what promises to be a difficult re-election campaign next year, pledged to have all tsunami-detection equipment replaced or repaired.