'It's not possible'

TWO of the villages wiped out by the 10m wave had been the site of the Chicago Field Museum’s research on

friendship, a museum anthropologist

said. “I’ve talked to people in Port Moresby,” said John Terrell. “Two of the places that we know well - one of them that we just love, Warapu - don’t exist any more.”

The villages of Arap and Warapu which Terrell estimat ed had a population of between 1000 and 2000 each, had been located on the devastated spit.

“If you ever wanted to put a village in a place where it was most vulnerable to this sort of thing, that’s where you would put it,” Terrell said. “I’m very upset by this. It’s the sort of thing that happens on such a scale that you can’t imagine. You think ‘Warapu, it must be there. It’s not pos sible. it’s not possible’.” ■

Coretta Yorenti, believed to be suffering a fractured skull

Bodies of drowned villagers