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Algeria: Bulldozers move in
27/05/2003 16:10 - (SA)
Algiers - The delicate work of cradling intact bodies out of the ruins of Algeria's killer earthquake has been abandoned, and bulldozers reigned supreme on Tuesday in the stricken northeast of the north African country.
"When the heavy equipment comes in, the family have to accept maybe just a lock of hair or a body part," said Paul Sheppard, part of a 90-strong team from the South African army who are helping in recovery efforts.
He was speaking outside an apartment building in Boumerdes, the city east of the capital that bore the brunt of the tremor last Wednesday.
The building was originally five storeys high, but the surviving top three floors now weigh down on the rubble of the lower floors that gave way in the disaster.
South African sniffer dogs had localised three bodies pinned underneath, and Mohammed Hadjene told AFP that the body of his sister Fatma was one of them, along with that of his niece.
The bodies of his brother-in-law and Fatma's two other children had already been recovered intact, he said.
But on Monday, the South Africans abandoned the effort to recover the remaining bodies, and a bulldozer had already arrived to begin the heavy demolition, having received the go-ahead from the authorities.
'Merchants of death'
Hundreds of rotting corpses are thought to remain entombed in the ruins, and health authorities are concerned over the risk of contamination.
No new official death toll has been announced since Monday, when it stood at 2 217 dead and thousands injured, a scale of mortality that has provoked fury across the traumatised nation, both over the government's slow response to the emergency and over the hundreds of collapsed buildings.
Property developers have been branded "merchants of death," accused of scrimping on construction materials and taking liberties with the building code to throw together housing projects that now lie in ruins.
For his part, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was accused of starting his campaign for re-election next year atop the ruins, and he was unceremoniously bundled out of Boumerdes when he tried to visit the city on Saturday.
Rules on the books since an earthquake in 1980 claimed 3 000 lives in the Chlef area, 200km west of Algiers, have been routinely ignored and the government has played ostrich, or worse, colluded in the abuse, according to the allegations.
Survivors across the stricken area were eager to show journalists the evidence of inferior construction materials and methods - mangled pillars with insufficient steel rods in them, concrete mixed with seawater, and so on.
"The laws aren't the problem, it's their application," Ahmed Boudaoud, head of an architectural advisory board told the local press.
'Bearded ones'
A probe ordered by Housing Minister Mohamed Nadir Hamimidi was launched on Tuesday, and the Algiers professional architects' council called on its members to sign up to provide expert analyses of the building collapses.
On the relief front, the government moved to assert its authority after an early shortfall was filled by volunteers - including grassroots radical Islamist organisations - as well as international rescue squads and Algerian soldiers, who grateful victims say were present from the start.
State radio repeatedly announced an order under which all relief material must pass through the Algerian Red Crescent amid allegations that some of the aid could be diverted.
The appearance of the Islamists - known as boulaya, or "the bearded ones" - at many disaster spots was seen as opportunistic politics.
Whether they are succeeding in winning hearts and minds, however, is a question that must be weighed against reports of ongoing attacks by hardline Islamic extremists.
Security services reported on Tuesday that 14 members of a single family were killed overnight near Chlef. Another eight people were reported killed on Sunday in the same region, stronghold of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA).
- AFX
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