International

Indonesian disaster leaves whole villages buried

PADANG, Indonesia, Oct 3, 2009 (AFP) -Whole villages in Indonesia's quake zone were found obliterated by landslides Saturday, as rescuers searched desperately for up to 4,000 people believed still trapped in the disaster area.

The extent of the damage from Wednesday's 7.6-magnitude earthquake widened as attention turned to the hundreds of villages in the hills outside the Padang, a devastated city of one million which was worst-hit.

Man makes a phone call in front of his house, which collapsed after the earthquake, in Padang. REUTERS

AFP journalists travelling from the coastal area on Sumatra island to the surrounding mountains encountered dozens of devastated houses on the steep roads, and then four villages buried by landslides.

A search and rescue officer from the local government named Topan said that up to 400 people could have perished in the four hillside villages alone.

“The difficulty in this rescue operation is that the houses are buried under the soil as much as four metres deep,” he told AFP.

“So far we have been using our hands to dig up the soil.”One body was seen lying in a stream nearby, but Topan said he expected to find many more. A 100-strong rescue team arrived on the scene but was unable to bring in heavy machinery because of the broken, narrow roads.

Bob McKerrow, head of the Indonesia delegation of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, said aerial photos showed the extent of the damage in the rocky, mountainous outlying regions.

He said hundreds of villages were in the disaster zone, and that the few which had been visited all reported deaths and serious injuries that were in need of treatment.

In Padang, where hardly a single building has been left undamaged, rescuers were racing against time to haul any survivors from schools, hotels and homes that have been reduced to tangles of concrete and rubble.

“We estimate about 3,000 to 4,000 people are still trapped or buried under the rubble,” UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Indonesia El-Mostafa Benlamlih told AFP.

Trapped for 48 hours

PADANG, Indonesia, Oct 3, (AFP) -Suci Refikawulan Sari was scrambling for safe ground with her 13 English students when the stairs below and roof above crumpled, sending them all tumbling into rubble, steel and dust.

“I saw my other students being crushed by falling beams, everyone was screaming,” she told AFP on Saturday.

Pinned on her back for the next 48 hours, her legs wedged between collapsed beams and the crushed body of one of her former charges, the 25-year-old comforted herself with thoughts of her baby son.

“I was telling myself 'I must survive, I've got to see my 14-month-old boy grow up. I want to see him get big and become a good person,'” she said. Lying exhausted in a hospital bed, Suci was just one of two people plucked alive Friday from the twisted wreckage of the Prayoga school in the Indonesian city of Padang after Wednesday's massive Sumatra quake.

One of her students, 20-year-old Ratna Kurnia Sari, lay trapped alive in the same hot, stifling cavity, as they held hands.

The first day passed in silence. The air was at times unbreathable, only relieved by the occasional roaring gust. The second day, the dull clinking of rescue workers gave way to a tentative crack in the concrete through which rescuers passed water, milk and bread.

Lying in a bed in the same hospital, Ratna calmly described the horror of reaching out to another friend, Veronica Claudia Tanzil, who was crushed beneath the shifting rubble.

“I was screaming and crying 'Mama, mama'. I was with my teacher, I was holding her hand and my friend Claudia was behind me,” Sari said, her legs bloodied beneath and covered in medical ointment.

“She wanted to hold my hand but the floor and ceiling fell. Claudia's hand snapped off when it collapsed on her. She fell and she landed on my legs,” she said.

“I could see her, I touched her, I tried to wake her up.”Blackened with dust and limp from exhaustion, Ratna was the first to be pulled from inside the rubble. Suci was taken out hours later.

 
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