JAKARTA, 29 May 2006 — Indonesia’s government declared a state of emergency after a quake killed more than 4,600 people, and rescue workers raced against time today in the hope of finding survivors under the debris of razed homes.
Some 35,000 buildings around the city of Yogyakarta were reduced to rubble when a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck at the crack of dawn on Saturday.
After a Cabinet meeting late yesterday, Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the emergency period would last three months and the goverment aimed to complete “reconstruction and rehabilitation” within a year.
“We will have an emergency period for three months, May till August. The objectives are providing food, health care and shelter,” Kalla told reporters.
“The funds needed are about 1 trillion rupiahs ($100 million) ... for repairing homes and facilitating people’s needs. This figure can change. It comes from the state budget and international aid.”
Rescue workers dug desperately through rubble yesterday for survivors of Indonesia’s earthquake as weeping relatives buried victims of the disaster.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has pledged an aid of $5 million for quake relief. More aid in the form of relief materials will be made available by the Saudi Red Crescent Society.
“King Abdullah has ordered the Royal Saudi Air Force to airlift the relief materials including blankets, tents and medicines immediately,” said a Saudi Press Agency report. On behalf of his country, Arif Suyoko, an Indonesian Embassy spokesman, thanked the government and people of Saudi Arabia for the humanitarian gesture.
Arif said, “The mission had so far received 50 inquiries to help the quake victims.”
“We have also received a large number of condolence messages from Saudi officials and businessmen including a message of sympathy from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal,” said Arif.
Referring to the embassy’s efforts to raise funds, Arif said the mission had also planned to organize a major community event to collect donations from Indonesian workers. “These funds will be sent to Indonesia to help relief and rehabilitation,” said the spokesman.
In the quake-hit areas, thousands of troops and emergency rescue teams joined volunteers who clawed at debris with their bare hands at the scene of Saturday’s quake in Central Java, but power blackouts and heavy rain at dusk hampered efforts.
In hard-hit Bantul district, south of the provincial capital Yogyakarta, the stench of bodies filled the air as soldiers used a backhoe to dig through the rubble in one neighborhood that was completely leveled by the temblor.
The top priority in the flattened district was to “evacuate victims still trapped in the rubble, using heavy equipment,” said Gendut, a provincial health official.
Residents said at least two people remained trapped in the debris. Yuni, a woman in her 40s, searched frantically for her uncle, who lived with a maid at a house that had collapsed. “We are resigned and willing to let him go. Our only hope is that we can find his body so we can bury him properly,” she told AFP.
Bodies were still being pulled from the wreckage of homes as grieving families hurriedly buried their dead in makeshift graves in simple ceremonies as they read verses from the Qur’an. There was confusion late yesterday over the death toll, with two hotlines from the same government ministry giving different figures.
Officials at the Social Affairs Ministry finally set the death toll at 4,611, rather than the figure of 3,875 given earlier, blaming the mishap on a break in internal communications. Indonesia appealed for foreign aid, with Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda saying in Malaysia: “This is a humanitarian disaster. Any country that can contribute, we are grateful for it.” Hospitals struggled to cope with thousands of injured, many of whom spent the night outside, and relief workers rushed food and medical supplies to some of the 200,000 people left homeless.
The lack of adequate shelter, combined with heavy rain, set the stage for a grim second night in the open air for many displaced by the quake, with scores huddled under small tarpaulins to stay dry.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies issued an emergency appeal for nearly $10 million and separate multimillion dollar aid pledges poured in from overseas. Aid workers said the immediate priority was to treat the injured, but warned that dwindling supplies of food and water and a lack of housing could pose long-term challenges.
“Clearly the top priority right now is the treatment of injured people,” UNICEF spokesman John Budd told AFP.
“There are three hospitals in Bantul and five in Yogyakarta — all are overwhelmed and they are not even treating the slightly injured any more,” he said.
Anton Susanto, a member of the UNICEF assessment team already in the quake zone, said 30 to 40 percent of those injured were children, with many suffering from head wounds and broken bones. “People are just laid out everywhere,” he said. “People are still very, very traumatized. Frequent aftershocks are still going on.” More than 470 aftershocks shook parts of Java, further terrifying residents who were afraid to return to their homes.
Adding to the fear, Mount Merapi — a volcano north of the quake’s epicenter — continued to simmer after weeks of spewing lava and heat clouds that saw 20,000 people evacuated from their homes amid a major eruption alert.
Most of the major damage and casualties from the quake occurred in towns and villages in the lush green farming belt south of the ancient city of Yogyakarta, with a population of 1.5 million.
As volunteers distributed food, bottled water, tents, tarpaulins and baby kits, troops battled to repair cracks in Yogyakarta’s airport runway to speed the arrival of aid shipments. But some survivors complained help was coming too slowly. “Since yesterday, no district officials have come to check on us,” Tugio, whose hamlet of Plesetan was razed, told AFP. The 6.3-magnitude quake also damaged the Prambanan compound of Hindu temples but the nearby Borobudur Buddhist temple complex was left unscathed.
— With input from M. Ghazanfar Ali Khan in Riyadh
