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Jakarta appeals for aid, teenager pulled from ruin

Indonesian soldiers crawl under a collapsed building during a rescue attempt in the Sumatran city of Padang yesterday to search after a 7.6-magnitude earthquake hit the area on Wednesday. Indonesia appealed yesterday for more foreign aid and rescue equipment. PHOTO: AFP

Indonesia appealed for foreign aid yesterday as the stench of decomposing bodies hung over wrecked buildings where overwhelmed rescuers pulled a teenager alive from her collapsed college yesterday morning, 40 hours after Wednesday’s devastating earthquake.

Two days after the magnitude 7.6 quake toppled thousands of buildings on Sumatra, the government said nearly 3,000 might still be trapped under the rubble.

In the city of Padang, emergency teams faced a third night of work to pull bodies from ruins that have claimed the lives of at least 1,100 people.

“Our main problem is that there are a lot of victims still trapped in the rubble. We are struggling to pull them out,” Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari told reporters.

“We need help from foreign countries for evacuation efforts. We need them to provide skilled rescuers with equipment,” she said, also appealing for medics to treat badly injured victims, many with broken bones.

Homeless survivors in the coastal city have spent two nights sleeping out in the open and are hungry, frightened and falling victim to profiteers who have jacked up prices of water and other essentials.

Several countries have pledged aid and sent emergency teams to the area, but efforts to organize a full-scale rescue operation are being hampered by blocked roads, broken power lines and patchy communication networks.

The Red Cross in Geneva said aerial photos suggested the disaster zone extended much further than had previously been known — stretching far across West Sumatra, with some villages entirely destroyed.

“The feedback is that Padang city and environs are bad, but once you go outside into the surrounding rural areas, the situation is very seriously grave,” said Christine South of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society.

“There was talk of complete devastation of some villages, 100 percent devastation, and 50 percent in others,” she said.

In a district north of Padang, stricken residents said they’d seen no rescue workers.

Most structures there had been leveled, and people were using shovels and their bare hands to clear landslides and dig out bodies.

Against a grim backdrop of grief and destruction, however, rescuers found a reason to cheer: Ratna Kurniasari Virgo, 19, a sophomore majoring in English, was found alive under the rubble of the Foreign Language School of Prayoga.

With excited shouts and giving words of encouragement to each other, rescuers pulled Virgo hands-first from a hole drilled in the debris yesterday morning.

Her olive-colored T-shirt almost spotless, Virgo was laid on a stretcher before being taken to hospital to be treated for a broken leg.

“She is fine, conscious and does not have any life-threatening injuries,” said Nining Rosanti, a nurse at the hospital.

However, another woman, 20-year-old Nopa Labianawho, who remained pinned under a mountain of concrete at the school, could be heard shouting frantically to rescue workers and urging them to come to her aid.
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