Jakarta seeks international aid for the more than 1000 dead in Sumatra earthquake
Jakarta (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Indonesian Minister for Health, Siti Fadilah Supari, has called on Monday to foreign countries to send teams of volunteers and heavy machinery to help his country dig through the rubble of the earthquake in West Sumatra, which is thought to have provoked over a thousand deaths.
"We need the support of foreign countries -she said - for the evacuation. We need professional equipped rescue teams ". The minister is in Padang, near the epicentre of the quake. "Our main problem - she continued - is that there are many people still buried under the ruins. We find it difficult to locate and extract them".
The work of volunteers and rescue teams in the area is being hampered by the lack of trucks to move the rubble, electricity supplies are still down and communications lines are only partially restored. Mrs Supari said that there is even a shortage of medicine to treat the wounded.
The 7.6 magnitude earthquake that struck the province of West Sumatra on 30 September, has so far killed 770 and destroyed many buildings, it is feared that thousands of people are trapped under collapsed structures.
John Holmes, head of the UN humanitarian aid agency, said yesterday in New York that at least 1100 people are feared dead in the earthquake in Indonesia. The National Centre for Disasters in Jakarta has added a further 2180 injured and 2650 buildings collapsed.
Until now, Japan, South Korea and Australia have responded to the call for aid. Caritas Indonesia is already in place with volunteers and essential items.
For some time now, scientists have been warning the nation Indonesian that Padang is a "natural" epicenter for earthquakes, because it within "the ring of fire", where the Eurasian plate collides with the Indo-Australian plate.
Kerry Sieh, a professor of geology in Singapore, says that the earthquake of 30 September is part of a cycle that began in 2007 along a 700 km off the coast of Sumatra called the “Mentawai trail”. In this cycle, over the next 10 years, there could be up to 8.8 magnitude earthquakes, which could generate tsunamis with waves up to 5-6 meters.
.png)
