JAKARTA LIFE'S STYLE
Rescuers and aid workers were fanning out on Monday into the hills of Indonesia’s Sumatra island, where hundreds of people were buried in landslides triggered by an earthquake that may have killed3,000.
In the shattered city of Padang, which bore the brunt Wednesday’s 7.6 magnitude quake, unidentified victims pulled from the rubble were due to be laid to rest. Relief workers said there was little hope of finding anyone else alive in the ruins.
“The search and rescue will end in a couple of days,” said Sjaak Seen, deputy team leader, United Nations Disaster
Assessment Coordination. “Normally, if you are under the rubble more than 72 hours you have only a minor chance of survival.”
While aid and international rescue teams have poured into Padang, a port city of 900,000, help has been slow to reach remoter inland areas, with landslides cutting many roads. When rescuers arrived they found entire villages obliterated by landslides and homeless survivors desperate for food, water and shelter.
“I am the only one left,” said Zulfahmi, 39, who was in the village of Kapalo Koto, near Pariaman, about 40 km (25 miles) north of Padang, with 36 family members when the quake struck. “My child, my wife, my mother-in-law, they are all gone. They are under the earth now.”
Health officials said five villages had been buried in torrents of mud and rock torn out of the lush green hills by the force of the quake. “In the villages in Pariaman, we estimate about 600 people died,” said Rustam Pakaya, head of the Health Ministry’s crisis centre.
Pariaman, closer to the epicentre, is one of the worst-affected areas. “In one of the villages, there’s a 20-metre-high minaret, it was completely buried, there’s nothing left, so I presume the whole village is buried by a 30-metre deep landslide.”
(KOMPAS.com)
0 komentar:
Post a Comment