London, October 06: Workers stopped demolishing a hotel damaged by last week’s powerful earthquake in Indonesia as an Australian search and rescue team looked for a woman who was reportedly heard crying out beneath the rubble.
The Queensland Fire and Rescue used specialised voice detection equipment to try to determine if anyone was still alive under the rubble of the Ambacang hotel in the regional capital of Padang, West Sumatra, team leader John Cowcutt said.
The episode underscored the agony of the families of thousands of people who are missing after last Wednesday’s 7.6-magnitude quake collapsed buildings in Padang and sent landslides crashing down onto villages in the surrounding hills.
The official death toll rose to 704 today and could reach into the thousands, officials said.
Hotel worker Rizal said he heard a woman’s faint cries coming from within the hotel’s remnants on Tuesday, even over the roar of backhoes and other machines that were clearing away the building’s collapsed roof.
“When I walked among the rubble, I heard a weak voice screaming ‘Help, help, help!’ ” said Rizal, who like many Indonesians uses just one name.
“I am confident it was from a woman who survived. Her voice was getting weaker and fading away.”
That was enough for officials, who called in search crews.
“We stopped for a moment so that rescuers could check if there really was a voice,” said Lieutenant Colonel Harris, an army officer helping in the recovery operation, wondering aloud,
“How long can someone survive without food or water?”
Demolition crews had begun knocking down damaged structures around Padang and hauling off debris in trucks.
About six bodies were removed and loaded into waiting ambulances to be taken to hospital morgues.
The broader search for survivors was halted on Monday – five days after the quake struck off the coast of Western Sumatra.
Aid workers from at least 20 countries were focused on caring for the hundreds of thousands left homeless.
Six helicopters shuttled instant noodles, blankets, milk and other aid to the isolated hillside villages of the Padang Pariaman district, where landslides buried more than 600 people, said Ade Edward, head of operations control at West Sumatra’s Centre for Disaster Management.
“We have stopped looking for living survivors and are maximising the use of heavy equipment,” he said.
“We hope to clear the rubble in two weeks so we can start reconstruction.”
Yesterday, hundreds of children went back to classes in schools set up in tents supplied by UNICEF.
In the old market area, stalls were full of food and bustling with residents stocking up on vegetables, fruit and fish.
Rows of stalls were still smoking from fires that broke out after the quake, possibly from electrical short circuits.
Shopkeepers working beside cracked walls and teetering buildings swept up the mess of concrete and broken glass.
The city of 900,000 resembled a sprawling demolition site with houses, mosques, schools, a mall and hotels brought down.
Emergency workers faced an uphill battle trying to reach remote communities in the hills of Pariaman where whole villages were wiped out by landslides.
The force of the quake gouged out mountainsides and dumped tonnes of mud, boulders and trees, burying hundreds of people alive.
Heavy rain since and thick wet mud also made it difficult for aid workers to reach the stricken areas, said Gagah Prakoso, a spokesman for the Indonesian Search and Rescue Agency.
The Meteorological and Geophysics Agency warned the region could see strong winds and storms for the next two days.
It was unclear precisely how many people are without shelter, but more than 88,000 houses were flattened, UN and Indonesian agencies said. Another 100,000 public buildings were damaged.
Based on an estimate of five people per household, a Red Cross official said up to one million people had been directly affected by damage to their homes.
“We estimate there were about 170,000-200,000 houses damaged, 90,000 of those are seriously damaged, meaning you can’t live in them,” said Bob McKerrow, the head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Indonesia.
Asked about the death toll, he said: “I think we’ll see figures rising to 3,000-plus.”
The website of the national Disaster Management Agency showed the latest death toll at 704, with 295 missing.
Government minister Aburizal Bakrie said $US600 million ($A683.76 million) was needed to repair infrastructure.
—Agencies