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Aid workers rush food to quake-stricken Indonesia

A woman mourns her dead relatives in Gunung Sitoli, Indonesia, yesterday. PHOTO: EPA

Aid workers rushed food to quake-stricken Nias island and tried to restore running water yesterday as survivors were still being pulled from the rubble after the region's latest massive earthquake. The government lowered its estimated death toll from the tragedy to about 400 to 500 people from an earlier estimate of 1,000.

Meanwhile, survivors living under tarpaulins since Monday night's 8.7-magnitude quake said they were going hungry, but in signs of hope among the devastation, rescuers pulled a 13-year-old girl alive from a collapsed five-story building in Nias and a baby girl was born in a makeshift hospital in an abandoned school.

"We will not give up hope. We will keep looking," Red Cross official Herri Ansyah said.

Indonesia's president visited the remote island, which bore the brunt of the earthquake in the same Indian Ocean region where an even-larger quake three months earlier triggered Asia's tsunami catastrophe.

In pouring rain, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono toured the main Nias town of Gunung Sitoli, visiting a mosque and praying with a Catholic priest at a church being used as a makeshift morgue for Christian victims of the quake.

Gunung Sitoli remained without power and running water yesterday, as islanders and rescuers frantically searched through destroyed buildings for survivors, bodies and belongings as aftershocks continued to rattle the area.

The UN sent a landing craft packed with food toward the island from nearby Aceh province, and it was expected later yesterday or today, said UN relief coordinator Francois Desruisseauz. Aid workers assisted local engineers to restore water and power.

"I hope that within two days there will be running water," he said.

Under a tarpaulin on the grounds of a mosque in Gunung Sitoli, Yusman Gule had no water to mix with his meager dried food, so he fed his 6-year-old daughter Yumni with just the powder. She lost an ear, broke an arm and badly squashed her fingers in the quake, but still managed to smile.

"Don't leave us here to die," the father said. "It's difficult to find food. All we can do is beg."

Later yesterday, a crowd of hungry and angry islanders mobbed Social Affairs Minister Bachtiar Chamsyah demanding food.

"You have been working so slowly," a woman yelled in images shown on Metro TV. "We haven't had any food since the quake."

Chamsyah pleaded for patience from the crowd, saying food would arrive later in the day.

"The problem is distribution. We admit the distribution has been slow," he said later. "We can understand that people are dissatisfied, but thanks be to God the situation is getting better."

The baby girl born yesterday in Nias was delivered in the morning at an emergency hospital staffed by Indonesians and Singaporeans, and the proud father said he would wait for Yudhoyono to arrive before giving his new daughter a name.

"We want him to give her a name," said Jul, who like many Indonesian's uses only one name.

Indonesian workers dug for five hours early yesterday before pulling a 13-year-old girl from rubble where she had been trapped for 52 hours. She was unhurt apart from some scratches on her foot, Ansyah said.

The government said yesterday that so far 279 bodies had been buried and the final toll would likely be between 400-500 across the disaster zone. Earlier in the week, the vice president predicted the toll could reach 2,000 and North Sumatra's governor had estimated that 1,000 people died.

Foreign military help began arriving on the island Wednesday when two Singaporean helicopters landed to distribute some food and water to a frantic crowd of survivors.

Japan and Australian also planned military missions, and an Australian military transport flight headed to the quake zone yesterday packed with medical supplies.

US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said US naval ships and the medical ships, Niagara Falls and Mercy, were steaming toward the battered islands.

Early yesterday, a magnitude-6.3 aftershock was reported off the west coast of Sumatra, the Colorado-based US Geological Survey said. There were no immediate reports of tsunami warnings.
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