Disaster officials say the death toll from a tsunami that barreled into several remote Indonesian islands one week ago has climbed to 449.
Nelis Zuliastri, a spokeswoman for the National Disaster Management Agency, says the number climbed with the discovery of more bodies in the disaster-zone. The country Sunday was still recovering from the twin disasters of the tsunami and eruption of a volatile volcano.
A 7.7-magnitude earthquake spawned the towering wave that some witnesses say was more than 18-feet-high, sweeping away more than 700 homes.
Hundreds of villagers were reported missing.
But Zuliastri said Sunday the number continued to fall as islanders who had fled to high ground were slowly returning home. She said at least 96 people remain unaccounted for.
On Saturday, officials said 135 reported missing earlier had been found alive. They apparently had escaped to higher ground.
But a Chilean surfer, who was among those known to survive, provided a detailed account of his personal survival story.
Sebastian Carvallo said he fled to the highest point he could find — the third floor of a thatch-roofed beach house — as three towering waves struck.
He had been showing surfing videos to fellow guests on his last night in the area when the powerful earthquake struck. When he heard a distant roar two minutes later, he knew instantly that he had to run.
He grabbed his computer and his camera, rounded up the other guests and rushed to the top of the building.
From that vantage point overlooking the lagoon, Carvallo and the others had a terrifying front-row seat Monday night as waves struck, shaking the building so violently they thought it would collapse.
"We heard this huge noise, like a train out of control. We just ran to the top of the building," Carvallo, 29, said Friday in an interview with The Associated Press.
"It was noise and chaos. You can hear the water coming, coming, coming. And then before the second wave hit the building, everyone was screaming and when the wave hit the building you could only hear people praying," he said.
A videographer, Carvallo managed to shoot the frenzied moments of panic inside the Macoroni Surf Resort on North Pagai.
He estimated that two of the waves were at least 16 feet high. Early reports said there was only one wave that was 10 feet high, but some witnesses have since described one or more waves that were taller.
Incredibly, all 19 guests and eight Indonesian staff at the resort survived — even though five people were caught outside.
Two of them climbed palm trees to escape the high water and three others wrapped their arms around tree trunks and clung for their lives.
Carvallo described the ordeal as "the scariest moment in my life."
After daylight Tuesday, Carvallo shot video of destroyed villas and the debris on the shore.
By Friday, Carvallo was out of the tsunami zone and headed back to Chile, grateful to have survived. "At the moment, I'd like to be safe," he said.
Still, he said he'd almost certainly return to Indonesia one day, perhaps to the same islands.
"In my opinion, Mentawais is a paradise," he said. "It's a perfect place for surf in the world. And the people are very nice."
The Mentawai islands are revered by surfers for their consistently high swells and perfectly formed waves breaking on their shores in the Indian Ocean. Dozens of surfing resorts and wave-chasing boats operate there and after the tsunami, many have lent their boats to the relief effort.
Carvallo was wrapping up an eight-week stay on North Pagai, where the resort owner had hired him to make promotional videos.
Thousands of villagers returned to their homes on the slopes of Indonesia's most volatile volcano, taking advantage of an eerie lull in activity to check on their crops and livestock.
One day after Mount Merapi's most powerful eruption in a deadly week, a fiery red glow emanated from the peak of the notoriously unpredictable mountain and black clouds of ash tumbled from its cauldron.
But the violent bursts and rumbling had all but stopped Sunday.
Mount Merapi unleashed a terrifying 21-minute eruption early Saturday, followed by more than 350 volcanic tremors and 33 ash bursts, said Surono, chief of the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation.
Surono, an Indonesian scientist who goes by only one name, warned the volcano that has already killed 36 people this week could burst back to life any minute.
He said a major eruption — like Saturday's — is often followed first by a period of calm and then by another big blast.
The simultaneous catastrophes have severely tested the emergency response network. Indonesia lies in the Pacific "Ring of Fire," a cluster of fault lines prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity.