As Authorities Struggle to Help Indonesian Quake Victims, Neighbors Fill the Void - NYTimes.com

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By PETER GELLING and NORIMITSU ONISHI

PADANG, Indonesia — Emergency workers continued to struggle Sunday to reach several remote villages buried beneath landslides caused by a large earthquake, while a steady stream of bodies, wrapped in yellow bags, arrived by ambulance at Padang’s main hospital.

More than 700 people were confirmed dead throughout the island of Sumatra, and thousands remained missing four days after a 7.6-magnitude earthquake hit the western coast. Heavy rains at night hampered rescue efforts.

In the heart of Padang, with little or sometimes no help coming from the authorities, some affected neighborhoods turned to an informal network of businesses and volunteers to fill the void.

On one block in the city’s Chinese quarter, workers at a coal concern and a truck rental company set up a base from which they dispatched much-needed earth-moving vehicles across the city. The two companies responded to private requests, usually from friends and business partners, said Budianto, 38, who supervises shipping at the coal company, Bumi Anyer Wisesa, and had no experience dealing with rescue missions.

Aside from one soldier who stood guard on a side street where a tractor had started to clear rubble on Sunday morning, officials had yet to reach the neighborhood.

“There’s no coordination with the government at all,” Mr. Budianto said.

A colleague was driving around the city, trying to assess the requests streaming in, but Mr. Budianto was unable to reach him because of erratic cellphone service.

“It’s difficult because there’s no clear command,” he said. “Sometimes someone in a damaged house will come and plead with our truck operators for help.”

Not far away, a group of church volunteers had been treating about 350 patients a day, mostly for less serious injuries. A Malaysian aid truck, apparently noticing the sign outside the volunteers’ temporary facilities, stopped by with some medical supplies. It was the first time the church volunteers had received outside assistance, said Sam Soh, who was coordinating the group’s efforts.

“We are running out of food and medication,” Mr. Soh said. “We can’t give people less than five days of antibiotics for the medication to be effective.”

Doctors said the possibility of finding survivors was increasingly slim with each passing day. The main hospital appeared eerily quiet over the weekend.

“Very few living patients have arrived at the hospital over the weekend,” said Idrus Patarussi, an official from the Indonesian Health Ministry. “The likelihood of finding any more survivors, in fact, is small.”

Emergency officials, however, remained hopeful.

“This is still a rescue mission, not a recovery mission,” said Winston Chang, chief of the United Nations’ office for disaster assessment and coordination.

Anxious family members trying to find their loved ones gathered outside the hospital’s morgue to check lists of names and photographs. Doctors said that most of the bodies that had arrived so far had been identified and taken away by relatives.

“I am here to pick up my husband’s body,” said Titi Relawati, 45, who sobbed at the sight of her husband’s photograph. Rescue workers found her husband buried inside the Ambacang Hotel, the site of the city’s largest rescue effort. Scores are believed to have been buried when the seven-story hotel collapsed.

The authorities said that they had prepared a mass grave in a field just outside the city, but that so far it had not been used. Several mosques were said to be holding collective burial ceremonies at local cemeteries.

As hopes of finding survivors have faded, some have grown angry at the slow pace of rescue efforts, especially residents from more remote villages outside the city.

“There are no medical supplies, no food, no drinks, no aid groups, no government officials — nothing,” Buyung, a 33-year-old standing over his unconscious mother at the hospital in Padang, said about his home village of Tandikek, most of which lies buried beneath a landslide.

Several of Mr. Buyung’s family members managed to evacuate his mother, Saryani, 60, after a concrete slab struck her head. They carried her down a rural, dust-covered road until a passing car picked them up and took them nearly 50 miles to the hospital.

Mr. Chang, the United Nations coordinator, said rescue teams from Australia, Turkey and South Korea had gone north to Padang Pariaman, the rural district where Mr. Buyung’s village is located, on Sunday morning.

The teams were planning to head into the district’s remote areas, where entire villages have been buried, Mr. Chang said.

Indonesian troops who arrived in those areas on Saturday morning were hobbled by a lack of equipment and coordination, angering residents who had been waiting for help since the quake hit Wednesday evening.

Hundreds of people caught in the landslides there were still missing, and few survivors expected to find loved ones alive.