Aid moves to thousands displaced by Indonesia floods

BUKIT RATA, Indonesia, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Government and aid agencies were moving food, water and medical supplies on Thursday to hundreds of thousands forced into temporary shelters by floods and landslides on Indonesia's Sumatra island.

But in Bukit Rata village in Aceh province's hard-hit Tamiyang regency, where 64 families have pitched tents on the roadside and higher ground, not everyone was satisfied.

"We have just complained to the district office about the lack of assistance. We know our hamlet is supposed to receive 25 sacks of rice but only 20 sacks arrived," said displaced resident Suroso Kasimin.

Water has receded but houses were still covered by thick mud. Some residents were trying to cleaning up their homes.

The government has been using helicopters to get aid to the most isolated points in Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra, while military planes and lorries shuttle relief supplies to other areas.

The confirmed death toll in Aceh and neighbouring North Sumatra province has remained around 100 in recent days, but figures for the displaced have climbed to above 400,000.

"Displaced people in Aceh are at 365,335, while in North Sumatra (they are) at 44,189," said Laksmita Novira, a U.N. aid spokeswoman in Aceh.

More than 200 people were missing in Aceh alone, she said.

Medication and doctors had been sent to help the displaced, according to Rustam Pakaya, the health ministry's crisis centre chief. "So far, there is no serious health problem," he said.

Lina Sofiani, a UNICEF officer in Jakarta, told Reuters: "Today, a child protection team from UNICEF's Banda Aceh base will go to east Aceh. Three diarrhoea cases were reported".

The government was sending additional food to flood-affected areas, and polluted wells were being treated with chlorine and temporary camps fogged with insecticide, the health ministry's Pakaya told Reuters.

TWO YEARS AFTER TSUNAMI

The flooding came two years after a giant tsunami left about 170,000 dead or missing in Aceh, a remote but resource-rich province whose capital, Banda Aceh, is 1,700 km (1,060 miles) northwest of Jakarta.

Aceh and North Sumatra produce palm oil, coffee and rubber, while Aceh has major offshore natural gas fields and onshore processing plants.

Traders say washed out bridges and damaged roads have hampered delivery of raw materials to factories and pushed up prices.

Some coffee shipments from plantations to ports have also been affected but not enough to hit prices, an industry official said.

Effects from the flooding have been minimal on output and processing of palm oil and and natural gas.

Authorities blame heavy rains and the effects of deforestation for the latest destruction. Lack of adequate forest cover leaves the ground less able to absorb excess water.

Flooding has also hit parts of peninsular Malaysia, across the Strait of Malacca from Sumatra, killing nine people in the worst-hit state of Johor. Four others are missing.

The floods, which the Malaysian government described as the worst since 1969, have displaced more than 60,000 people in the states of Johor, Pahang and Malacca. Malaysia's Meteorological Department said rains in Johor and southern Pahang were expected to continue until Sunday. (With additional reporting by Mita Valina Liem and Muara Makarim in Jakarta and Syed Azman in Kuala Lumpur)

Colorado braces for more snow as Northern Calif. begins cleanup after heavy storm

DENVER (AP) — Still recovering from last week's blizzard, Colorado cities braced Wednesday for another storm that could bring more than a foot of snow and high winds to the state and cause planes to be grounded at Denver International Airport again.

The National Weather Service said a storm, expected Thursday, could pack gusts up to 45 mph, whipping the heavy snow into blinding whiteouts. Denver could get 18 inches of snow by Friday morning, and up to 2½ feet were forecast for the foothills, the weather service said.

Weather Service forecasters said flights from Denver's airport could be delayed or even canceled but cautioned the storm's path and intensity were difficult to predict.

Crews were still trying to clear away ice and hard-packed snow from last week's storm. "Believe it or not, the first storm is not over for us," said Saleem Khattak, streets manager for Colorado Springs' Public Works Department.

Last week's storm dumped up to 3½ feet of snow on some parts of the state, shutting down highways, schools, businesses and mail delivery in some towns and cities. Denver's airport was closed to all flights for 45 hours, stranding about 4,700 people at the airport one night.

Meanwhile, utility crews in San Francisco scrambled Wednesday to fix power lines knocked over during a winter storm that snarled traffic, killed one woman and left tens of thousands of people without electricity across Northern California.

The post-Christmas storm had passed through the San Francisco Bay Area by Wednesday morning.

Downed power lines caused by heavy rains and winds left more than 107,000 customers without power Wednesday afternoon, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. spokesman Brian Swanson said.

One woman was killed when the storm's powerful gusts pushed an oak tree into a home, Marin County Fire Department spokeswoman Sarah Gibson said.

The storm had forced some flight delays Tuesday at San Francisco International Airport. But by Wednesday, flight arrivals were on time while some departures were slightly delayed, airport officials said.

In Southern California, powerful winds knocked out power to tens of thousands of customers as dangerous surf pounded the coast.

Southern California Edison said about 115,000 customers had outages ranging from momentary to several hours, and about 5,000 remained without electricity Wednesday afternoon. About 10,000 Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers were without power Wednesday evening, spokeswoman Carol Tucker said.

At least one death is being blamed on the storm. A man drowned in Ventura Tuesday while rescuing his 4-year-old grandniece, who was knocked off a jetty while watching the large waves that preceded the storm.

Breakers as high as 10 feet pounded the coast Wednesday in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

Asia gets back online after quake

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Telecom companies quickly cobbled together new telephone and Internet networks on Thursday as Asia began recovering from a Taiwanese earthquake that snapped undersea cables, snarling service across the tech-savvy region.

Less than 48 hours after the powerful quake ruptured the two crucial cables off Taiwan's southern tip, companies from South Korea to Singapore said they managed to partially restore most of their service to millions of customers.

They did it by rerouting traffic through satellites and cables that weren't damaged by the 6.7-magnitude tremor that killed two people.

Four repair ships were sailing to the quake zone, but they weren't expected to arrive until Tuesday, said Lin Jen-hung, vice-general manager of Chunghwa Telecom Co., Taiwan's biggest phone company.

The crews would need to find the fault, survey the conditions and pull up the cables for repair -- a job Chunghwa said could take two weeks.

Most international Internet data and voice calls travel as pulses of light through hundreds of undersea fiber optic cables crisscrossing the globe. The cables -- clusters of glass fibers enclosed in protective material -- are often owned by groups of telecom companies, who share costs and capacity.

"Cables break all over the place, from sharks nibbling, anchors dragged across," said Markus Buchhorn, an information technology expert at Australia National University.

But Buchhorn added the broken cables become a problem if -- like in the Taiwanese case -- several snap at the same time and there are not immediate backup lines to keep the traffic flowing.

Chunghwa estimated its revenue loss from the earthquake damage at about $3 million. Repairing the cables would cost about $1.53 million, the company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

The outage reminded stock traders, travelers and online video gamers how addicted they've become to the Internet.

"Many lost the opportunity to make fast money," said Francis Lun, general manager at Fulbright Securities in Hong Kong.

"I haven't experienced anything like this before," Lun added. "We've become too dependent on these optic fibers -- a few of them get damaged, and everything collapses."

Online gamer Daniel Lee, 28, said he was suffering in Hong Kong because he couldn't spend his usual eight to 10 hours a day playing games on the Internet.

"Most online games are routed through Taiwan, and now I can't play any of them. I can't contact a lot of people because my e-mail is down. It's a hassle and it's depressing, but I can't do anything about it," said Lee, who's unemployed.

Long lines formed at Hong Kong's airport because the computer system at the check-in counters for Taiwan's China Airlines weren't working.

A woman at the airline's hot line said the computer system had been down since Wednesday afternoon.

"We had to switch to manual services because the system in Taipei was affected by the quake," said the woman, who only gave her surname, Sze. "But all our computers are running normally now."

South Korea's biggest carrier, KT, said more than half of its 92 damaged lines should be fixed by the end of Thursday. One of the company's customers was the Foreign Ministry, which recovered its service.

In Japan, major carriers KDDI Corp. and NTT Communications said most fixed-line telephone services were up and running.

NTT spokeswoman Akiko Suzaki said that a full recovery would require a relaying of undersea cables and could take weeks.

Tim Dillon, senior research director with U.S.-based Current Analysis, which studies the telecom industry, said customers in Asia will have to get used to sluggish service in the next few weeks.

"We have a lot of traffic all going to alternate routings at the same time," Dillon said. "It's obviously going to result in slower speeds and congestion as everyone piles onto the same cable."