Indonesia said yesterday it feared thousands had died in a major earthquake as exhausted rescue workers clawed through mountains of rubble with their bare hands in a race to find survivors.
The first rescue flights laden with food, medicine and body bags arrived in the devastated region on Sumatra island as another powerful quake struck further south, causing more injuries and sparking panic.
Wednesday afternoon’s 7.6-magnitude quake toppled buildings and led to fires in Padang, home to nearly a million people on the coast of Sumatra, leaving the city largely without power and communications.
“The latest figures we have suggest the death toll has risen already to 1,100,” UN humanitarian chief John Holmes told a press briefing at the UN.
Mr Holmes said hundreds more were injured and the numbers of dead and hurt were likely to rise as the full scale of the tragedy unfolds.
Many districts remain inaccessible to emergency services.
“Our prediction is that thousands have died,” Indonesian Health Ministry crisis centre head Rustam Pakaya said earlier.
Rescue teams from the Indonesian army and Health Ministry descended on the city and surrounding towns to hunt for survivors in the twisted wreckage of collapsed buildings and homes, with work expected to go on into the night.
In pouring rain that hampered rescue work early in the day, overwhelmed police and soldiers clawed through the tangled remains of schools, hotels and the city’s main hospital, the M. Djamil hospital.
Padang, which lies between the Indian Ocean and the Bukit Barisan mountains, was a chaotic mass of traffic jams and rubble set against the constant din of sirens as ambulances tried to negotiate the gridlock.
At the M. Djamil hospital, a constant stream of injured residents were dropped off at hastily erected tents where doctors worked frantically.
A medic said they were treating hundreds of people for broken bones, head injuries and trauma, mostly sustained when the quake hit.
“We are running out of doctors and nurses because we are overwhelmed with patients,” he said.