Padang (Indonesia): Rescuers held out scant
hope on Sunday for Indonesian quake survivors, handing recovery
teams the grim task of retrieving the decaying bodies of some
4,000 victims believed buried in rubble.
More international rescue teams arrived with sniffer dogs
and specialist equipment on the fourth day after the
7.6-magnitude quake, with large areas still unexplored. But
few experts expected to pluck out people alive.
In Padang, a vast team dug at the Ambacang hotel, a focus
for rescue efforts, where hopes had been raised for survivors
yesterday after police received a mobile text message
supposedly from someone inside.
"I think the chances of finding survivors are very slim,"
the team leader of Newmont Emergency Rescue Team, Samsubin,
said at the scene of the ruined Dutch colonial-era hotel.
"We are taking an aggressive approach today to remove
about 140 bodies that we believe are buried near the swimming
pool."
Jack hammers and excavators worked over the huge pile of
concrete, metal rods and debris which has drawn large crowds
despite the clouds of dust and lingering smell of
decomposition.
Outside of Padang, the scale of the disaster is only now
being discovered. Desperate villagers complained to reporters that they were being neglected while the focus
remained on Padang.
Bureau Report
