Search for Asia quake survivors abandoned

International rescuers abandoned their search today for survivors among the rubble of wrecked homes in the main city of the Indonesian island that bore the brunt of a powerful earthquake four days ago.

“There are no (more) survivors here,” said Olaf Lingjerde, a UN search and rescue official. ”We found one person alive yesterday morning, that was the last person. It’s been 24 hours since then and there’s been nothing.”

He said teams would move to other towns on shattered Nias island, which was hardest hit by Monday night’s magnitude-8.7 quake.

“After three days the survivor rate goes down, especially when you have this weather,” Lingjerde said, referring to heavy rain that has fallen in recent days. “There are no reports from locals of any more sounds” from under the rubble.

Four international teams of rescuers have spent the days since the quake combing the wreckage of about 200 collapsed houses in the city of Gunung Sitoli but have only managed to pull a few people alive from the rubble.

Some of the rescuers were taking helicopters to remote parts of the island to resume searching there and the Antara news agency reported that Hungary was sending a team of searchers with special sniffer dogs to help.

UN relief co-ordinator Francois Desruisseauz said that a ship carrying 350 tons of rice, water, tinned fish and other supplies arrived at Nias late yesterday and the food was being distributed to hungry survivors Friday.

The rice was shipped from warehouses in Aceh province, where it was being stored to give to victims of the December 26 quake and tsunami catastrophe that killed more than 126,000 in Indonesia and left about half a million homeless.

Dr Suprijadi, a spokesman from the Health Ministry’s crisis centre who uses only one name, said that in the days since the quake, 341 bodies have been recovered and buried.

The Indonesian government said yesterday that it expects the final death toll from the disaster to be between 400 and 500.