No respite for disaster-hit Asia
2009-10-02 14:28
Padang - Quake-trapped corpses rotted in Indonesia, the first storm deaths emerged from Laos and the Philippines cowered before a "super typhoon" as nature offered no respite Friday to disaster-hit Asia.
As the international community struggled to respond to the devastation wreaked by an extraordinary series of tsunamis, earthquakes and tropical storms across the region, the death toll in affected countries continued to mount.
In the Indonesian city of Padang, which was ravaged by a 7.6-magnitude quake Wednesday, ill-equipped emergency teams clawed through the rubble of collapsed buildings in an increasingly desperate search for survivors.
UN officials put the number of dead at 1 100 and said the figure was expected to rise, with assistance yet to reach outlying villages.
The Red Cross in Geneva said aerial photos suggested the disaster zone stretched far and wide over West Sumatra.
"There was talk of complete devastation of some villages, 100% devastation, and 50% in others," said Christine South of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
With its emergency resources stretched to the limit and blocked roads and broken power lines hindering relief efforts, the Indonesian government pleaded for foreign help in the form of specialised rescue workers, equipment and medics.
State of calamity
"We don't even have dogs," said Suryadi Soedarmo, a surgeon from an emergency ambulance service in the capital Jakarta who arrived with 10 experts trained to enter collapsed structures.
Hopes of finding many more survivors dwindled amid the pervading smell of trapped bodies decomposing in the tropical heat.
US President Barack Obama said he was "deeply moved" by the loss of life and suffering as Washington announced $300 000 in immediate aid and set aside another three million to help quake victims.
In the Philippines, President Gloria Arroyo put the entire nation under a "state of calamity", as millions of terrified flood survivors, many of them sheltered in vulnerable, makeshift evacuation centres, faced the fresh horror of an approaching super typhoon.
Typhoon Parma, packing gusts of 230km/h, was forecast to hit rural areas in the north of the Philippines' main island of Luzon before dawn on Saturday.
The government warned Parma would tear down houses in its direct path, while likely bringing more heavy rain and high winds to the nation's capital, Manila, and nearby areas still recovering from floods triggered by tropical storm Ketsana last weekend.
Ketsana killed nearly 300 people and affected more than three million as it pounded the region around Manila with the heaviest rains in four decades.
'It's no longer a rescue effort'
The storm wreaked havoc across much of Southeast Asia, with 99 deaths reported in Vietnam and 17 in Cambodia, while the Red Cross in Laos said on Friday that at least 16 people had been killed and 135 were missing.
In the Pacific island of Samoa, emergency workers said they had given up hope of finding more survivors from a tsunami that slammed into the island on Tuesday.
"It's no longer a rescue effort, it's more like recovery and finding out what's happened in some remote villages," a Samoan disaster management official told AFP.
Horrified aid workers found the bodies of at least five children in one Samoan village on Thursday, including one who had been tossed into a tree by the force of the tsunami.
Officials said up to 150 may have been killed in Samoa, while the death toll stood at 31 in neighbouring American Samoa and nine in Tonga.
Samoa declared a national disaster after a giant 8.0 magnitude earthquake - the worst in 90 years - churned up waves between three and 7.5m high which pounded sleepy South Pacific villages and popular tourist resorts.
