PADANG, Indonesia: Rescuers pulled two women alive from their collapsed college, nearly two days after a powerful earthquake devastated western Indonesia, as cries for help from a flattened hotel spurred the frantic search for more survivors Friday.
The government said nearly 3,000 may still be trapped under the rubble after Wednesday’s 7.6-magnitude quake toppled thousands of buildings on Sumatra Island. The United Nations said 1,100 had been killed in and around Padang, a port city of 900,000 that sits atop one of the world’s most active seismic fault lines along the Pacific “Ring of Fire.”
Paramedics laid out dozens of corpses, and the stench of decomposing bodies filled the air.
Some victims have yet to receive help. 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, rescuers found a reason to cheer: Ratna Kurniasari Virgo, 19, an English major sophomore, and a teacher, Susi Revika Wulan Sari, were found alive under the rubble of their college in Padang, the Foreign Language School of Prayoga.
Sari was extricated at 5:20 p.m., almost exactly 48 hours after the college crumbled in the 5:15 p.m. quake on Wednesday, and she was pinned down by the rubble among dead bodies of her students.
“She was conscious. Only her legs and fingers are swollen because she was squeezed,” said the institute’s director, Teresia Lianawaty.
Earlier Friday, Virgo was yanked out, also conscious, after a 40-hour ordeal of being trapped in the rubble.
Elsewhere in the city, at the site of the former Ambacang Hotel where as many as 100 were feared trapped, rescue workers detected signs of life under a hill of tangled steel, concrete slabs and broken bricks of the three-story structure, said Gagah Prakosa, a spokesman of the rescue team.
“We heard some voices of people under the rubble, but as you can see the damage is making it very difficult to extricate them,” Prakosa said, as a backhoe cleared the debris noisily.
International aid pledges poured in and specialist rescue teams from countries including Australia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea had arrived or were en route.
