PADANG – Aid for thousands of survivors of an earthquake in Indonesia trickled in yesterday and international rescue teams set to work, but efforts were hampered by power blackouts and a shortage of heavy equipment.
The United Nations said more than 1,000 had been killed in and around Padang, a port city of 900,000 that sits atop one of the world’s most active seismic fault lines along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”. Thousands more were feared to be still trapped.
Overstretched rescuers dug through the rubble of schools and other buildings, occasionally locating survivors but mostly retrieving bodies.
As darkness fell, floodlights were rigged above shattered buildings so work could go on through the night. “So far victims have received aid but we need to intensify it,” said Indonesian Red Cross chief Marie Muhammad. “There are still many roads cut off because of landslides.”
Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono toured the disaster area and said $10 million (€6.86 million) in relief would be put to work fast.
Governments in Taiwan and the Philippines have come in for fierce criticism in recent weeks for a perceived slow response to disasters, but Jakarta-based political analyst Kevin O’Rourke said Mr Yudhoyono was unlikely to suffer a similar backlash.
“Yudhoyono is the type of politician who tends to convey the type of image that people, I think, seek when these disasters happen,” said Mr O’Rourke of the former general with a common touch.
The UN humanitarian chief, John Holmes, told a news conference at UN headquarters in New York that some 1,100 people had been killed in the 7.6 magnitude quake.
Yesterday rescuers pulled out a 21-year-old student named Sari alive from the wreckage of a language school, to the applause of a crowd that had gathered to watch.
But the family of Suci, who was lying next to Sari and pinned under concrete, were still waiting anxiously for her to be freed.
“I hope she can get out today. I went into the tunnel and I could hear her voice. I could see her hand,” said her husband.
Metro TV said at least eight survivors were detected inside the ruined Dutch-colonial era Ambacang Hotel. Kyodo news agency reported a Japanese rescue team with sniffer dogs was leading the effort to free them.
Indonesia’s health minister said the destruction did not appear to be as extensive as first feared, but the death toll could still number in the low thousands.
“I predict the number will not reach 4,000,” Siti Fadillah Supari was quoted as saying by news website detik.com.
Indonesia’s disaster management agency said the number of dead and missing confirmed so far was 806.
Padang, capital of West Sumatra, has been struggling with a shortage of clean water and electricity. In Pariaman, a small city nearer the quake’s epicentre, conditions appeared worse, with thousands of houses reported to have collapsed. Conditions in more remote areas in the mountainous hinterland were unknown.
TV footage from the Pariaman area showed an entire hillside had collapsed, leaving just barren red earth and the odd fallen tree where several villages had been.
Patients evacuated from Padang’s badly damaged main hospital were being cared for in tents.
Corpses placed in yellow body bags were lined up at an open-air morgue.
Yunas Lubis stood weeping at the morgue yesterday, holding his baby granddaughter, mourning his dead son-in-law. “My daughter’s husband was just pulled out of a building this morning. He was trapped there for two days,” he said. “Why did it take so long to get him out? It was too late.”
International aid pledges poured in and specialist rescue teams from countries including Australia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea had arrived or were en route.
US president Barack Obama, who lived in Indonesia as a child, also offered assistance.
“Indonesia is an extraordinary country that’s known extraordinary hardship with natural disasters,” he said. – (Reuters)