Sunday, October 4, 2009

Hopes dim for quake-hit Sumatra


Aid workers in quake-hit Sumatra say they are increasingly unlikely to find survivors under the rubble, as they push into devastated remote areas.

Four days after the 7.6 tremor, the scale of the disaster is becoming clear, with entire villages destroyed.

Widespread road damage is preventing teams from reaching many of the injured beyond Padang, a city of 900,000 people that took the full force of the quake.

About 1,000 are known to have died; up to 3,000 more are said to be missing.

While rescue efforts are still concentrated in Padang, concern is increasing about areas outside the city, where the earthquake triggered huge landslides.

In one village, a resident told Reuters news agency on Saturday: "Don't bother trying to bring aid up here. Everyone is dead."

Oxfam worker Ian Bray, who is in Padang, told the BBC aid teams faced huge challenges getting to outlying areas.

"There is a road that is only 25km (15 miles) long outside Padang that usually takes 35 minutes to drive - it now takes 10 hours," he said.

"We're facing huge logistical problems of trying to get to places which are really hit badly and those are the outlying areas."

Villagers contacted by reporters told of hundreds of people missing in each settlement.

"In my village, 75 people were buried. There are about 300 people missing from this whole area," one resident, Ogi Martapela, said.

The BBC's Alastair Leithead, who visited an isolated village north of Padang, says the size of the landslides is astonishing - with soil and trees ripped from the slopes and dumped into valleys.

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