Hundreds more feared dead in Sumatra quake

Source: The Guardian

Reports of hundreds more people, including a wedding party, buried in three more Indonesian villages

Saturday 3 October 2009 14.53 BST

Landslides triggered by an earthquake in western Indonesia wiped out at least three villages this week, an official said today.

As many as 644 people, including a wedding party, were buried under mountains of mud and debris, according to Rustam Pakaya, the head of the health ministry's crisis centre.

If all 644 are confirmed dead, the government's death toll from Wednesday's quake would jump to more than 1,300 from the current 715.

Pakaya said the villages of Pulau Aiya, Lubuk Lawe and Jumena were completely levelled by the landslides. Four hundred people attending a wedding in Pulau Aiya were buried by a quake-triggered landslide, and 244 people were buried in the two other villages.

=snip=

In remoter areas outside Padang the full scale of the disaster was only starting to become clear, with survivors drinking coconut water after their drinking sources were contaminated, Reuters reported.

"In my village, 75 people were buried. There are about 300 people missing from this whole area. We need tents and excavators to get the bodies but the roads are cut off," said Ogi Martapela, 28, who said his older brother had died in the landslide.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/03/indonesia-quake-levelled-villages-rescue-aid

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The extremely sad thing is that the government were warned about this over a year ago and they ignored requests for help to prepare...

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1sDQJCUXxs">Padang quake warning ignored

Scientists and the mayor of quake-hit Indonesian city Padang in Sumatra told Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen months ago that a potentially catastrophic earthquake and tsunami were likely to hit the area.

But requests for funds from the national government in Jakarta for proper evacuation procedures and other measures to prepare for disaster were turned down.

From: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2009/10/2009101127769719.html

that should read "thousands" :(

In the Observer article they are saying that "More than 3,000 people were listed as missing before the news about the villages emerged."

It makes me furious to think that a lot of lives could have been saved if the government had taken seriously the warnings made over a year ago.

:banghead:

Sumatran hopes fade as whole villages are sucked into the earth
Thousands missing after earthquake devastates countryside and rescue workers begin to look for bodies rather than survivors

Ben Doherty and Peter Beaumont
The Observer, Sunday 4 October 2009

=snip=

In the countryside, as rescuers finally reached remoter areas, they discovered that at least three villages had disappeared.

Rustam Pakaya, the head of the health ministry's crisis centre, said yesterday that the villages of Pulau Aiya, Lubuk Lawe and Jumena had been wiped out by the landslides. "They were sucked 30m deep into the earth," Pakaya said of the 400 people missing in the village of Pulau Aiya, where the wedding party was being celebrated. "Even the mosque's minaret, taller than 20m, disappeared." He said about 244 others were buried in Lubuk Lawe and Jumena villages. Only 26 bodies had been extricated.

An Associated Press photographer who flew over the Pariaman district in a helicopter saw several landslides in the area. At one, a giant section of a hillside had been swept away and the remains of destroyed houses protruded from the mud. Roads were gone and trees had been uprooted and swept downhill.

Asked about rescue efforts in the town of Pariaman and the surrounding villages, Indonesia's vice-president, Jusuf Kalla, was blunt, stating that the effort was now about retrieving bodies. "We can be sure that they are dead. So now we are waiting for burials," he said.

"Don't bother trying to bring aid up there," said Afiwardi, the resident of one flattened village, who pointed past a landslide that cut off a road. "Everyone is dead." With hope running out, hard decisions have to be made. Teams from Switzerland, Britain, Turkey, the US, Australia, Korea and Japan are searching destroyed homes and buildings along the western coast of Sumatra, co-ordinated by a UN operations centre, which has been established in the provincial governor's residence.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/04/sumatra-indonesia-earthquake-villages-un