Relief supplies and aid workers on Sunday poured into the earthquake-devastated areas of Java, Indonesia, as the death toll soared to more than 4 300 people.
Hundreds of soldiers and Red Cross volunteers joined anxious residents combing through the rubble of the estimated 25 000 destroyed homes, but only a handful of survivors were discovered.
Officials said they doubted whether many more people would be found alive, but that the death toll was likely to rise as bodies were found and some of the injured died.
Damaged infrastructure, somewhat chaotic coordination and curious visitors clogging main roads meant aid distribution was patchy in the worst-affected area, the Bantul district south of Yogyakarta.
An estimated 200 000 people were forced to spend a second night in the open in pouring rain and with few resources.
Most people whose houses did survive intact also camped out, afraid of further tremors. Since the 6,3-magnitude quake at 5.54am on Saturday there have been more than 450 aftershocks, the largest of which measured 5,2 on the Richter scale.
A clearer picture emerged on Sunday of the scale of the disaster. While most of Yogyakarta escaped relatively unscathed, the destruction in surrounding villages was enormous, with well over 80% of buildings razed and in some places almost total devastation.
The Prambanan Hindu temple also suffered extensive damage. Carved reliefs that had been under painstaking reconstruction for 70 years lay shattered on the ground at the ninth-century world heritage site.
With the most health centres flattened, the region’s few hospitals continued to be overwhelmed by about 20 000 injured people requiring attention. Doctors said the biggest problem was lack of staff rather than a lack of supplies. They had had to turn away the least serious cases.
Hundreds of injured people had to lie in the open outside hospitals on plastic sheets, straw mats and newspapers, the more seriously injured attached to intravenous drips hanging from tree branches.
A United Nations rapid assessment team arrived in Bantul on Sunday night and is expected to take several days to work out what help is needed and to coordinate the international response. The UN has already diverted supplies and staff from Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra, which is still recovering from the 2004 tsunami in which more than 170 000 Indonesians died.
One UN official, Dr Puji Pujiono, predicted the initial emergency phase of the relief operation would last a week to 10 days. ”The government is still functioning and much of the infrastructure is in place, so there should not be too many obstacles to overcome,” he said. ”Our job is just to support the government and make the coordination between all the donors and agencies as less problematic as possible.”
International governments have promised nearly $35-million, including about $7-million from the United Kingdom, but some diplomats in Jakarta said they were finding it hard to get direct answers from the Indonesian government. ”They say they want our help and welcome donations, but then get very vague when pressed on what we should send,” one Western diplomat said.
More than 100 aid agencies, local and international, have either arrived or are expected in the next few days. Several had already been in the area in anticipation of an eruption of the nearby volcano, Mount Merapi, which has been rumbling for weeks, spewing hot ash, poisonous smoke and lava.
Bantul’s district chief, Idham Samawi, said one remote area had yet to be fully examined. ”We expect to evacuate more bodies from there so the death toll will continue to rise.”
At least 10 refugee camps have been set up, but most of the homeless refused to leave what few possessions they had managed to salvage. Most are poor farmers and labourers. ”This is my home, this is where I’m going to stay,” Ibrahim Satryo said on the outskirts of Bantul town. ”We hope help will come to us soon, because so far we have received nothing.”
Idham said shelter materials, medicines and food were beginning to be sent to the subdistrict offices. ”However for some people the distance to the office will be too great so we will send stuff directly to the villages too.”
Yogyakarta airport was also badly damaged in the earthquake, and its closure has continued to hamper the relief operations. Officials said some flights might be able to resume today, but full operations are expected to take several more days to restore. – Guardian Unlimited Â