Monday October 5, 2009

Some schools reopen in quake-hit Indonesia city

By Razak Ahmad and Sunanda Creagh

PADANG, Indonesia (Reuters) - Markets reopened and some children attended school in the earthquake-shattered city of Padang on Monday, but inland hamlets engulfed by landslides were to be left as mass graves to focus on getting aid to survivors.

An Indonesian student and her teacher cry as they pray at their school after it reopened for classes following an earthquake in Padang, West Sumatra province October 5, 2009. (REUTERS/Dadang Tri)

Relief workers saw little chance of finding anyone else alive in the rubble of buildings five days after a 7.6 magnitude quake hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Three hamlets in the foothills of the Gunung Tigo mountain wiped out by landslides would be left as mass graves.

"Instead of the extra cost of evacuating the corpses, it's better to allocate the money for the living," Ade Edward, the head of the West Sumatra earthquake coordinating desk was quoted by Kompas newspaper as saying.

While aid and international rescue teams have poured into Padang, a city of 900,000, help has been slow to reach remoter inland areas, with landslides cutting off many roads.

When they have managed to reach the interior, rescuers have found entire villages obliterated by landslides and homeless survivors begging for food, water and shelter.

"Yesterday all I had to eat was a packet of instant noodles. All of us are hungry. We hear on the radio very nice words that aid is pouring in, but where is it?," asked Erol, a resident with a 10-day-old infant in Pasa Dama, a village outside Padang.

About 100 other residents were standing on the roadside asking for donations.

"We need tents and water. There are shops selling bottled water, but no one I know has any money," said Yuliana.

Health officials said five villages had been buried in torrents of mud and rock torn out of the lush green hills by the force of the quake, killing about 600 people.

"I know that no one could have survived when the landslide happened," said Jumahadi Sultan, a resident in the village of Kapala Koto in Patamuan district, about 60 km from Padang.

A rescue official said more than 100 people were at a wedding in Kapala Koto when the landslide hit.

It was not clear how many people have been displaced, but Indonesia's disaster agency said about 180,000 homes and 20,000 buildings had been damaged in the quake.

FEARS OF DISEASE

Indonesia's health minister, Siti Fadillah Supari, estimated the death toll could reach 3,000, adding disease was becoming a concern, especially in Padang city, where a pervading stench of decomposing bodies hangs over the ruined buildings.

But Priyadi Kardono a spokesman for the national disaster agency said: "The death toll could reach over 1,000 but I don't think it will go far higher than that."

Children were particularly vulnerable after the quake.

"The biggest threat to children now is illness due to things like dirty water and trauma," said Jon Bugge, a spokesman for Save the Children, whose group is delivering tarpaulins, plastic sheeting and water purifying tablets.

Some children returned to school on Monday in Padang as the city attempted to return to some form of normalcy.

"The building is safe enough but we have no power and water doesn't always come out of the tap," said Tri Raswati, 17, at High School No. 3 in East Padang.

But at another school children were turned away, because of the danger of collapse in a nearby building. Many public buildings collapsed in the quake raising questions about construction standards ina quake-prone area.

West Sumatra's governor said he would issue a new law to ensure all buildings were built to withstand a magnitude 8 quake.

"If the government fails to enforce it, the government can be sued. That's my guarantee," governor Gamawan Fauzi said.

Padang lies on one of the most active faultlines in the world, but some experts said the city had been ill-prepared and remained at risk of being wiped out in the next decade by a more powerful earthquake.

(Additional reporting by Olivia Rondonuwu in Jakarta and Royston Chan in Patamuan; Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Bill Tarrant)

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