Indonesian disaster leaves whole villages buried

Whole villages in Indonesia’s quake zone were found obliterated by landslides Saturday, as rescuers searched desperately for upto 4,000 people believed still trapped in the disaster area.

The extent of the damage from Wednesday’s 7.6-magnitude earthquake widened as attention turned to the hundreds of villages in the hills outside the Padang, a devastated city of one million which was worst-hit.

AFP journalists travelling from the coastal area on Sumatra island to the surrounding mountains encountered dozens of devastated houses on the steep roads, and then four villages buried by landslides.

A search and rescue officer from the local government named Topan said that up to 400 people could have perished in the four hillside villages alone.

“The difficulty in this rescue operation is that the houses are buried under the soil as much as four metres deep,” he told AFP. “So far we have been using our hands to dig up the soil.”

One body was seen lying in a stream nearby, but Topan said he expected to find many more. A 100-strong rescue team arrived on the scene but was unable to bring in heavy machinery because of the broken, narrow roads.

Head of the Indonesia delegation of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, Bob McKerrow said aerial photos showed the extent of the damage in the rocky, mountainous outlying regions.

AFP