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News Item: Mormons help family of Kenwood man who lost nephew in Java disaster
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| Mormons help family of Kenwood man who lost nephew in Java disaster | 23 Jul 2006 |
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http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060720/NEWS/607200326/1033/NEWS01 By KATY HILLENMEYER THE PRESS DEMOCRAT With an uncle still missing, a sister hospitalized and a nephew killed by Monday's Indonesian tsunami, Kenwood resident Samino Citrawireja was hastily preparing to fly home to his native island, Java. But a sister who fled from the destruction in western Java convinced him to wire the $4,000 he and his wife would have spent on airfare to help relatives pay for food, clean water, medicines, shelter and clothing. "They're totally crippled; they have nothing," Citrawireja said Wednesday, worrying that 55 extended family members on the Indonesian island will be depending on him. "I want them to be fed, to be healthy and to get back on their feet." Citrawireja, a self-employed landscaper, had returned to work Wednesday to get his mind off the death Monday of his 5-year-old nephew, Soleh, who was washed from his mother's grasp by a wall of water that crashed onto the beach near their modest home in the resort village of Pangandaran. Citrawireja's sister, Pujinah, was clutching son Arif in her right hand and Soleh in her left, he said, as she ran away from the rushing wave: "The water just took him away and she didn't see him anymore. She was bracing herself on a coconut tree." Pujinah is recovering from broken ribs and a broken arm in a makeshift hospital. Citrawireja's mother, brother and other relatives have taken refuge in the hills above their coastal town. Citrawireja saw Pujinah's flattened home in photographs posted on the Internet in the wake of Monday's tsunami. "It was flat. There's nothing left," he said. Both Mormon converts, Citrawireja and his wife, Esti Hendriyani, are being embraced by their church as members in Rincon Valley and Kenwood collect donations to be wired to the family's bank on Java. Real estate agent Brad Lowder, a close family friend who has visited Pangandaran twice, established a bank account to benefit their relatives. He made the first deposit Wednesday with what concerned friends from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and others had pulled together at the outset: $2,500. "Most of the people so far are people who know Sam and Esti and love them," Lowder said. Their relatives "are really, for the most part, starting over," he said. "It will literally be months before any of them will be able to earn any income." Citrawireja does not, at this point, fear for his uncle's life, though the father of four who's expecting his fifth child remains unaccounted for on Java. "Out of 50,000 people, they fled in hundreds of different groups," Citrawireja said. "He might be in one of those groups." A Samino Family Relief Fund has been set up at Downey Savings & Loan, 4620 Sonoma Hwy., Santa Rosa, Calif. 95409. |
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