Indonesia appealed for foreign aid yesterday as the stench of decomposing bodies hung over wrecked buildings where overwhelmed rescuers pulled a teenager alive from her collapsed college yesterday morning, 40 hours after Wednesday’s devastating earthquake.
Two days after the magnitude 7.6 quake toppled thousands of buildings on Sumatra, the government said nearly 3,000 might still be trapped under the rubble.
In the city of Padang, emergency teams faced a third night of work to pull bodies from ruins that have claimed the lives of at least 1,100 people.
PHOTO: AFP
“Our main problem is that there are a lot of victims still trapped in the rubble. We are struggling to pull them out,” Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari told reporters.
“We need help from foreign countries for evacuation efforts. We need them to provide skilled rescuers with equipment,” she said, also appealing for medics to treat badly injured victims, many with broken bones.
Homeless survivors in the coastal city have spent two nights sleeping out in the open and are hungry, frightened and falling victim to profiteers who have jacked up prices of water and other essentials.
Several countries have pledged aid and sent emergency teams to the area, but efforts to organize a full-scale rescue operation are being hampered by blocked roads, broken power lines and patchy communication networks.
The Red Cross in Geneva said aerial photos suggested the disaster zone extended much further than had previously been known — stretching far across West Sumatra, with some villages entirely destroyed.
“The feedback is that Padang city and environs are bad, but once you go outside into the surrounding rural areas, the situation is very seriously grave,” said Christine South of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society.
“There was talk of complete devastation of some villages, 100 percent devastation, and 50 percent in others,” she said.
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, however, rescuers found a reason to cheer: Ratna Kurniasari Virgo, 19, a sophomore majoring in English, was found alive under the rubble of the Foreign Language School of Prayoga.
With excited shouts and giving words of encouragement to each other, rescuers pulled Virgo hands-first from a hole drilled in the debris yesterday morning.
Her olive-colored T-shirt almost spotless, Virgo was laid on a stretcher before being taken to hospital to be treated for a broken leg.
“She is fine, conscious and does not have any life-threatening injuries,” said Nining Rosanti, a nurse at the hospital.
However, another woman, 20-year-old Nopa Labianawho, who remained pinned under a mountain of concrete at the school, could be heard shouting frantically to rescue workers and urging them to come to her aid.
STILL COMMITTED: The US opposes any forced change to the ‘status quo’ in the Strait, but also does not seek conflict, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US President Donald Trump’s administration released US$5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, including US$870 million in security exemptions for programs in Taiwan, a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters showed. Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said that all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers late last month on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the
France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and accompanying warships were in the Philippines yesterday after holding combat drills with Philippine forces in the disputed South China Sea in a show of firepower that would likely antagonize China. The Charles de Gaulle on Friday docked at Subic Bay, a former US naval base northwest of Manila, for a break after more than two months of deployment in the Indo-Pacific region. The French carrier engaged with security allies for contingency readiness and to promote regional security, including with Philippine forces, navy ships and fighter jets. They held anti-submarine warfare drills and aerial combat training on Friday in
COMBAT READINESS: The military is reviewing weaponry, personnel resources, and mobilization and recovery forces to adjust defense strategies, the defense minister said The military has released a photograph of Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) appearing to sit beside a US general during the annual Han Kuang military exercises on Friday last week in a historic first. In the photo, Koo, who was presiding over the drills with high-level officers, appears to be sitting next to US Marine Corps Major General Jay Bargeron, the director of strategic planning and policy of the US Indo-Pacific Command, although only Bargeron’s name tag is visible in the seat as “J5 Maj General.” It is the first time the military has released a photo of an active
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
RSS