529 confirmed dead and thousands feared trapped in rubble in western Indonesia as second quake strikes 180 miles from first
A second powerful earthquake has hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra, a day after the first devastating quake left more than 500 dead, thousands of people buried in rubble and a major city cut off from the outside world.
Today's quake, of magnitude 6.9, struck in the early hours about 180 miles from the epicentre of yesterday's more powerful tremor out at sea.
There were 529 confirmed deaths from the first quake, said relief officials, although the figure was likely to rise.
Indonesia's government dispatched rescue workers to the stricken region, while international aid agencies prepared to launch a major relief effort as tens of thousands of people spent a night in the rain after their homes were damaged.
The country's health minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, said: "I think it's more than thousands, if we look at how widespread the damage is. This is a high-scale disaster."
He said yesterday's quakes may have been more powerful than the Yogyakarta earthquake in Java in 2006, which killed 3,000 people.
In Padang, a city of 900,000, it was clear the authorities scarcely knew where to begin the recovery. There was no heavy lifting equipment to move the rubble under which hundreds more may be buried and soldiers were only just beginning to arrive in significant numbers.
"Help from the government is too slow," said Dodi, a resident who was queuing with thousands of others for petrol. "With gas, with medicines, with doctors, with the army. Many, many people are gone. They are dead. We need help."
People were sleeping on the street outside shattered homes or camping out at the airport. Even families whose homes stayed resolute in the face of the 7.6 magnitude quake were staying out of doors, fearful of aftershocks.
Many houses, though ramshackle, still stand. It is the large, public buildings, mostly those in the centre of town, that have been worst hit by the quake.
The rubble at the Dr M Djamil Hospital has not even begun to be sifted. Scores of bodies will emerge from it. Nasjid has waited at the hospital's ruins since early morning.
"I don't want to be here. I know my son is dead. But I cannot go home. I don't want to. So I just wait. But they tell me nothing. It is only bad news."
The Best Western hotel, the newest in the city, has lost its back half entirely and all its windows are blown out. A string of car showrooms along the main street – two and three storeys high, grand by Padang standards – are nothing more than rubble.
Yesterday's quake struck at 5.16pm, less than 24 hours after another deadly quake off the South Pacific island of Samoa. Its epicentre was reported to be about 30 miles offshore from Padang, at a depth of about 53 miles.
At least 500 buildings in the city collapsed in the quake. At least 80 people were missing at the city's five-storey Ambacang hotel, which also fell. Rescuers, working in heavy rain, found two survivors and nine bodies in the hotel's rubble.
The first emergency medical relief – a team of 40 doctors from Jakarta – was expected to reach the area today.
Rescue efforts have been hampered by the disruption of electricity and telecommunication lines, which have thrown Padang into darkness. Reports claimed all roads into the city were blocked by landslides.
Padang's airport was described as "inaccessible" by a pilot from the state airline who was forced to turn back. According to one report, the airport terminal roof had collapsed.
While most of the early attention has focused on Padang, concern was rising over the fate of towns and villages in the surrounding countryside. In the town of Maninjau, further inland, a resident, Hafiz, told local media he had watched houses being buried in a landslide when a hill collapsed.
The earthquake in Sumatra came 24 hours after a huge tsunami struck Samoa at dawn on Tuesday – triggered by an earthquake measuring between 8.0 and 8.3 – which also flattened villages and swept cars and people out to sea, killing at least 100 and leaving dozens missing. Survivors fled the churning water for higher ground on the South Pacific island.
Padang lies on one of the world's most active faultlines, which was responsible for the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 220,000 people on Boxing Day 2004.
From:.guardian.co.uk
