Search for survivors intensifies as death toll rises

INDONESIA said last night it fears thousands have died in a major earthquake as exhausted rescue workers clawed through mountains of rubble with their bare hands to find survivors.

The first flights laden with food, medicine and body bags began arriving in the devastated region on Sumatra island as another powerful quake struck further south, causing more injuries and sparking panic.

Wednesday’s 7.6-magnitude quake toppled buildings and led to fires in Padang, home to nearly a million people on the coast of Sumatra, and saw the city largely without power and communications. The UN said the death toll had risen to 1,100, while the official death toll was set at 770 with 294 people seriously injured, but those numbers are expected to soar as the full scale of the tragedy unfolds. Many districts remain inaccessible to emergency services. “Our prediction is that thousands have died,” health ministry crisis centre head Rustam Pakaya said.

Rescue teams from the army and health ministry descended on the city and surrounding towns to hunt for survivors in the wreckage of collapsed buildings and homes, with work going on well into the night.

In pouring rain, overwhelmed police and soldiers clawed through the tangled remains of schools, hotels and the city’s main M Djamil hospital. Padang, which lies between the Indian Ocean and the Bukit Barisan mountains, was a chaotic scene of traffic jams and rubble set against the constant din of sirens as ambulances tried to negotiate the gridlock.

At the M Djamil hospital, a constant stream of injured residents were dropped off at hastily erected tents where doctors worked frantically to treat victims. Emilzon, a medic, said they were treating hundreds of people for broken bones, head injuries and trauma. “We are running out of doctors and nurses because we are overwhelmed with patients,” he said. In front of a collapsed school, 49-year-old mother Andriani waited in tears as police picked through the rubble for her 14-year-old daughter and dozens of other children trapped inside.

“I’ve been waiting here since Wednesday. I haven’t been home yet and keep praying to God my daughter is alive,” she said, her reddened eyes darting back and forth across the rubble for signs of life. Police said the bodies of eight children had been hauled from the school, while another nine youngsters had been found alive. Authorities said they were suffering from a shortage of heavy machinery but the military said planes loaded with tents and blankets had been dispatched to help the thousands left homeless by the disaster. Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who returned from the US and flew to Padang, said emergency services should prepare for the worst.

“It’s better to overestimate than to underestimate,” he said. The government said it had approved €18 million in cash to help victims and international aid groups dispatched relief teams. US President Barack Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, pledged support there as well as providing assistance to Samoa and American Samoa, which were hit by a deadly tsunami. The quake struck off Sumatra’s west coast, 47 kilometres northwest of Padang, on a major faultline that scientists have long warned was set to release pent-up energy. A series of earthquakes in recent years, including one of magnitude 8.2 that struck Bengkulu province in September 2007 and another off Aceh that triggered the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, have released energy along the faultline.

“West Sumatra is like a supermarket for geological disasters. There are active volcanoes, landslides, land quakes caused by faults,” the head of the Geological Disaster Mitigation and Volcanology Centre said.

Dozens of aftershocks followed Wednesday’s earthquake, including a major one yesterday which the US Geological Survey measured at 6.8 and said struck on land 225kms southeast of Padang. The earthquakes followed a 8.0-magnitude tremor that spawned a deadly tsunami in the Samoan islands of the South Pacific. Both disaster zones sit on the volatile Ring of Fire, an arc of seismic instability around the Pacific rim.

lMinister of State for Overseas Development Peter Power has pledged €500,000 to families affected by the natural disasters in Southeast Asia and the Pacific yesterday.