The Irish Red Cross today announced it is deploying staff to the Indonesia earthquake zone and is sending funds to help the emergency operation.
The three members of the Irish Red Cross team who will attend the area in Sumatra are working to help victims of the major tsunami that struck the northern coastline of the Indonesian island nearly five years ago.
According to the Red Cross, two staff members will work on providing information to the people in the disaster zone, while the third will work on securing clean water supplies and setting up sanitation facilities.
“Communities and people’s lives have been destroyed by this disaster, and it is essential at this stage to ensure that disease and sickness do not spread through these traumatised communities,” said John Roycroft, Secretary General of the Irish Red Cross.
“People’s immediate needs for clean water, food, shelter and medical care remain a crucial component of the international response to this tragedy. The Irish Red Cross is therefore donating €30,000 for the immediate water and sanitation needs of the affected communities,” Mr Roycroft added.
The Irish Red Cross issued an appeal for donations following the disaster last Wednesday and said the response had been generous, despite the difficult economic times.
Markets reopened and some children attended school in the Indonesian port city of Padang today, but no hope remained for some inland villages following the recent earthquake.
Relief workers said there was little chance of finding anyone else alive in the ruins five days after a 7.6 magnitude quake hit the Indonesia island of Sumatra. Thousands are thought to have been killed.
An official said three hamlets on the foothills of the Gunung Tigo mountain wiped out by landslides would be turned into mass graves.
"Instead of the extra cost of evacuating the corpses, it's better to allocate the money for the living," Ade Edward, the head of the West Sumatra earthquake coordinating desk, said.
While aid and international rescue teams have poured into Padang, a city of 900,000, help has been slow to reach remoter inland areas, with landslides cutting many roads.
When rescuers arrived they found entire villages obliterated by landslides and homeless survivors desperate for food, water and shelter.
"I am the only one left," said one man who was in the village of Kapalo Koto, near Pariaman, about 40km north of Padang, with 36 family members when the quake struck. "My child, my wife, my mother-in-law, they are all gone. They are under the earth now."
Health officials said five villages had been buried in torrents of mud and rock torn out of the hills by the force of the quake.
"In the villages in Pariaman, we estimate about 600 people died," said Rustam Pakaya, head of the Health Ministry's crisis centre. Pariaman, closer to the epicentre, is one of the worst-affected areas.
"In one of the villages, there's a 20-metre-high minaret, it was completely buried, there's nothing left, so I presume the whole village is buried by a 30-metre deep landslide."
Addtional reporting: Reuters