Fisherman rescued a week after quake disaster

An Indonesian fisherman was found trapped under his boat and severely dehydrated today, a week after the devastating earthquake and tsunami.

The 24-year-old man, identified as Tengku Sofyan, was rushed to a hospital in Banda Aceh, where doctors gave him intravenous fluids. He could barely speak and had cuts on his body, doctors said.

“He’s in extremely fragile condition, especially mentally,” said Dr Irwan Azwar, who treated the man.

Witnesses said Sofyan was at sea when the tsunami hit. His boat was tossed onto the beach at Lampulo and he was trapped for a week and couldn’t eat or drink anything, they said.

The news came just hours after the head of Indonesia’s search and rescue team, Lamsar Sipahutar, said hopes of finding anyone alive had become “very bleak”.

“There is very little chance of finding survivors after seven days,” he said. “We are about to stop the search-and-rescue operations. If you survived the earthquake, you probably were killed by tsunami.”

The last person before Sofyan found alive was on Friday, when Indonesian Red Cross workers heard Ichsan Azmil’s cries for help from the ruins of a house in largely levelled Banda Aceh.

The official death toll in Indonesia, the country hit hardest, stood at just over 80,000 but officials fear it could climb to more than 100,000.

Sihatupar said the job was so psychologically disturbing that he needed to rotate new rescuers in after a week.

“It’s extremely taxing mentally to deal with this kind of work,” he said.

One Acehnese survivor, Zubandiah Ali, stood forlornly in front of her destroyed furniture shop, where two bodies were jammed against the front door by a vehicle hurled onto its side.

“I need to bury those bodies to have some peace of mind,” she said. “Maybe, then I can start to mourn and try to rebuild my life.”