Rescuers in Indonesia continued digging yesterday to reach dozens buried by a major earthquake that killed at least 63 people as anger mounted at the slow response by authorities. Police and troops cleared boulders and mounds of earth in the village of Cikangkareng south of the capital Jakarta in a frantic bid to reach those trapped following Wednesday’s 7.0-magnitude quake, officials said.
“At least 59 people were killed [throughout Java] ... 37 are still trapped [in Cikangkareng],” disaster management agency spokesman Priyadi Kardono told reporters.
The quake, which struck off the south coast of Java, triggered a landslide in the village that stripped hillsides bare and buried entire families.
“We’ve been using heavy machinery for the rescue effort,” Kardono said, after earlier attempts were hampered by poor access, forcing rescuers to pick through the rubble with bare hands, hoes and improvised tools.
Damage from the quake, which caused a panicked rush from swaying buildings in Jakarta, was spread throughout Indonesia’s main island of Java. At least 30,000 homes had been damaged and 5,000 people displaced, officials said.
In the village of Cipanas in West Java Province, hundreds of residents whose homes were destroyed set up a makeshift camp in surrounding fields.
Suryati, a 75-year-old villager, said locals had received little help from the government or aid organizations. The only assistance to have arrived came a day after the quake, she said.
“The help should have come on the day of the disaster. Although we have received rice, we still need more medical supplies,” she said.
“I have lost my house. That’s the only thing that I have,” she said, in tears.
In Cikadeu village in the nearby district of Tasikmalaya, one of the worst-hit by the quake, village chief Memet Tanuwijaya said locals were having trouble finding shelter as they waited for outside assistance.
“The mosque, which could have been our shelter during the night, has been destroyed. And there is only a small tent for all 28 families in the village,” Tanuwijaya said. “Hopefully assistance will come soon enough to provide us with tents, food and medical supplies.”
Kardono said the vast spread of the damage across Java — a fertile, hilly and densely populated island of around 125 million people — as well as limited personnel had slowed the response.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said his country offered assistance but Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has said Indonesia can go it alone.
The West Java provincial administration has promised to allocate 90 billion rupiah (US$8.8 million) of recovery aid, according to the Koran Tempo newspaper, while Yudhoyono promised an additional 5 billion rupiah.
Indonesia sits on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, where several tectonic plates converge.
A 7.7-magnitude quake triggered a tsunami off southern Java in 2006, killing 596 people and displacing about 74,000.
A massive quake off the coast of the island of Sumatra in 2004 triggered a catastrophic tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people around Asia, including 168,000 in Indonesia.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Through a basement door in southeastern Turkey lies a sprawling underground city — perhaps the country’s largest — which one historian believes dates back to the ninth century BC. Archeologists stumbled upon the city-under-a-city “almost by chance” after an excavation of house cellars in Midyat, near the Syrian border, led to the discovery of a vast labyrinth of caves in 2020. Workers have already cleared more than 50 subterranean rooms, all connected by 120m of tunnel carved out of the rock. However, that is only a fraction of the site’s estimated 900,000m2 area, which would make it the largest underground city in Turkey’s
Soaring high across a gorge in the rugged Himalayas, a newly finished bridge would soon help India entrench control of disputed Kashmir and meet a rising strategic threat from China. The Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as a feat of engineering linking the restive Kashmir valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time. However, its completion has sparked concern among some in a territory with a long history of opposing Indian rule, already home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 soldiers. India’s military brass say the strategic benefits
‘RADICAL LEFT LUNATIC’: Trump earlier criticized Kamala Harris, his new opponent, calling her ‘the ultra-liberal driving force behind every single Biden catastrophe’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called on voters to defend the country’s democracy as he explained his decision to drop his bid for re-election and throw his support behind US Vice President Kamala Harris. As “the defense of democracy is more important than any title,” Biden said that he was stepping aside to deliver an implicit repudiation of former US president Donald Trump in his first public address since his announcement on Sunday that he would not be the Democratic candidate. He did not name Trump, whom he has called an existential threat to democracy. “Nothing, nothing can come in the