Rescuers scrabble ruins for quake survivors

Residents pass by collapsed buildings in Gunung Sitoli, on Nias island yesterday following the 8.7 magnitude tremor that hit shortly before midnight two days ago. Rescuers estimate that the huge earthquake may have claimed at least 1,000 lives. PHOTO: AFP

The stench of death hung over the popular surfing destination off the west coast of Sumatra while clouds and rain hampered helicopters bringing emergency supplies to Nias and other islands close to the epicenter of the 8.7-magnitude quake.

"There are still a lot of victims under the ruins," said Nias deputy chief Agus Mendrofa, adding that a lack of earth moving equipment meant it was difficult to search survivors.

Mendrofa, the deputy district chief of Nias, one of the Sumatra coast islands worst affected said the death toll there was expected to reach at least 500 as rescuers struggled.

"People are vying with each other, demanding that their houses be worked on first, because they say they still have relatives there," Mendrofa told Jakarta's Elshinta radio.

The Indonesian Red Cross says it estimates at least 1,000 people have died in the disaster, which came three months after the December 26 earthquake and tsunami hit the same area, leaving 220,000 Indonesians missing and dead.

Officials say as yet, only a few hundred people have been confirmed dead on Nias and the neighbouring island of Simeulue, while fears are growing for the smaller Banyak isles, home to 10,000 people, from which there has been no word.

With the main airport knocked out of commission by the earthquake and a shortage of fuel for vehicles, a helicopter landing site has been set up on a soccer field in the centre of the main town of Gunung Sitoli.

Bodies of the dead lay in rows on the pitch, where an emergency triage centre has been set up, offering treatment for the injured and evacuation for those in need of major medical attention.

Corpses were also lined up outside the city's Binala Dharma Budddhist temple, which has become another makeshift collection point for the dead.

Elsewhere in the city, where hundreds of two-storey buildings lay in crumpled ruin. Residents, their faces emotionless with shock, hunted for loved ones.

In one place, crowds gathered round a lifeless limb protruding from rubble.

With no power on the island, many survivors spent their second night since the earthquake cowering in the darkness, crammed into the buildings that survived. A government office with its own generator is being used by dozens of people to charge mobile phones to stay in touch with the outside world.

"There are many bodies believed to be still trapped under ruins of buildings and we need heavy machinery to be able to retrieve them," said Mulya Hasjmi, a health official in Aceh, the Sumatra island province that includes Simeulue.

A reporter of the state Antara news agency in Simeulue said that at least 200 private and public buildings, including the general hospital and the district office in the main town of Sinabang, had collapsed.

A coordinator for UN aid operations said bad weather grounded Chinook heavy-lifting helicopters ferrying machinery and supplies from the Sumatra port of Sibolga for several hours, but that flights began later in the day.

As the aid arrived, about 500 people tried to storm the district chief's residence in Nias' main town of Gunung Sitoli, where three trucks loaded with essential food supplies were parked, Elshinta radio reported.

Before security officers restored order, several people carried away some cardboard boxes, the report said, playing a recording from the incident in which a woman was heard yelling: "Don't wait for too long, do not let us starve."

Indonesia's National Coordinating Agency for Disaster and Refugee Handling said the government had mobilised three helicopters, five light aircraft and three navy ships to transport relief, troops and volunteers and evacuate the sick and wounded.

Foreign troops and aid workers who had only just left Indonesia's tsunami disaster zone were Wednesday rushing back to help stricken victims of the latest earthquake as countries around the world rallied for a second emergency relief operation.

The Australian military, returning home after providing aid to victims of the December 26 earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia's Aceh province, has been remobilised following Monday's 8.7-magnitude quake which devastated the neighbouring islands of Nias and Simeulue off western Sumatra.

Japan offered to send more troops to the region, Singapore dispatched military helicopters and a team of medical and rescue workers to Nias, and the United States offered military logistical support.

Japan and the US had yet to make deployments in the absence of a request from Jakarta for military help, a potentially thorny issue after Indonesia had at one stage urged foreign troops to leave tsunami-hit Aceh by March 26 -- two days before the latest quake struck.

Oxfam International said it had sent an assessment team to Nias island by helicopter from the regional Indonesian capital Banda Aceh to size up the scale of the disaster.

Malaysia also sent C-130 transport planes loaded with equipment to help with the rescue effort, but with the main airport in Nias knocked out of commission for most larger planes, there was no way of landing the aircraft.

China's government said it would donate 500,000 US dollars in cash to Indonesia, while its Red Cross pledged 300,000 dollars. Canada, Germany and South Africa were among other nations pledging aid.

The United States deployed 16,000 military personnel, 26 ships, 58 helicopters and 43 fixed wing aircraft in the relief and recovery effort, the majority in Indonesia's Aceh province.