PEACE in this sleepy remote village was shattered this week when a powerful earthquake triggered widespread landslides, burying three entire hamlets and an estimated 400 people.
Coconut palms and other plants were uprooted and slammed along with tons of mud into homes built on the flanks of surrounding mountains, overlooking rice fields and a river that runs through the valley.
The Tandikek village in Padang Pariaman district is one of areas hardest hit by Wednesday’s magnitude-6.4 that devastated parts of West Sumatra province.
“I thought it was the end of the world,” 26-year-old survivor Nasirwan recalled. “I was swept away by the moving earth to the river, but I managed to escape instead of being buried.”
Nasirwan’s parents and a niece were not so fortunate. Their bodies have not been found.
His neighbors, teachers and their families who lived in an elementary complex did not make it either, said Nasirwan, himself a farmer. “I have resigned the fate of my family to Allah,” he said, clutching a bag of clothes, his legs covered with mud.
Soldiers, police and civilian rescue teams, equipped with only a single mechanical excavator, dug mounds of earth in the drizzling rain looking for the missing.
They found two bodies on Saturday, bringing the number of people found dead there to 20 so far, said local district police chief Uden Kusuma.
“We don’t have enough heavy equipment to carry out a rescue operation in such a large area,” said. “The earth that buries the hamlets is probably tens of meters high, so it’s an uphill task.”
Officials put the number of people buried there at between 300 and 400. Survivors said among the victims were people at a wedding party.
A Japanese rescue team surveyed the site and promised to return with more assistance, the police chief said.
In a nearby village, rescuers used chainsaws to cut coconut trees to get at a body buried by a landslide. A stench of decomposed bodies hung in the air.
Manrizal, one of the rescuers, said 17 people in four houses were buried there.
“The landslide also buried a 500-meter stretch of a new road,” he said.
The government put the death toll across West Sumatra at 540 as of Saturday, excluding the deaths in the three hamlets in Tendekek.
Rustam Pakaya, head of the Health Ministry’s crisis center, estimated that 3,000 people were still trapped under rubble and said that chances of finding them alive were slim.
Damage in Padang Pariaman appeared to be widespread. Houses crumbled, with only their corrugated zinc roofs visible.
Aid was slow to reach the area and survivors were forced to set up barriers on the roads, begging for donations from motorists.
“Help is extremely scarce,” said Toyo, who like many Indonesians goes by one name. “Even to get a tent we have to stop an aid convoy and force them to divert supplies to us.”
Padang Pariaman Mayor Mukhlis Rahman acknowledged that survivors had received little assistance so far. The UN World Food Program (WFP) said it was assessing the needs of the survivors and had not begun delivering foodstuffs.
“We realize in a situation like this, there’s always tension, but we have to be accountable for what we do,” said Mispan Indarjo, a WFP Indonesia senior program assistant.
He said food assistance for quake victims was being coordinated by Mercy Corps.
Nasirwan the farmer said he too hoped the government would soon provide aid to his devastated village, although he said he did not intend to live there again.
“I’m not sure if it’s still liveable,” he said. “I’ll find some other place to live.”
