Thousands still hungry, homeless in quake-hit Nias

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Aid workers tried on Saturday to reach outlying areas of Indonesia’s devastated Nias island where thousands of people are still homeless and hungry more than four days after a huge earthquake.

The U.N. has said that 1,300 people may have died in the main town of Gunungsitoli alone, and there are concerns the death toll could rise as they reach isolated parts of the island that have been cut off by landslides and damage to roads.

“People (aid workers) are moving out of town for the first time in a serious way today,” Oxfam official Alex Renton told Reuters by telephone from Gunungsitoli.

"Outside town, things are still very unclear.”

In the town itself, Singapore rescue workers were on Saturday trying to pull a survivor from the rubble of a wrecked house after he was found by an Indonesian soldier five days after the quake.

“He is below the staircase,” said Martin Laia, a relative, referring to the man, who he said was in his 40s.

“Thanks be to God!”

Renton estimated that only about 10 percent of the 5,600 sq km (2,100 sq mile) island had been assessed by aid agencies.

Reuters correspondents who rode motorbikes from Gunungsitoli on Friday along the road to Teluk Dalam town some 120 km (75 miles) south saw widespread damage to houses, bridges and roads and little sign of aid reaching people.

Thousands of people are facing food and water shortages because the quake destroyed water mains and markets.

“There is no problem with the amount of food. The problem lies with the distribution,” Vice President Jusuf Kalla told reporters after meeting with local officials on Nias. Kalla said the government was sending more ships and helicopters from the mainland and would try to restore the water supply within a week.

Around 1,500 Indonesian soldiers were digging through the rubble of houses in Gunungsitoli on Saturday, but rescuers who pulled several survivors from buildings earlier this week said there was virtually no hope of finding anyone else alive.

Heavy rains on Thursday and early on Friday, and ruined roads have hampered relief and rescue efforts, but increasing amounts of aid personnel and supplies have begun to reach Nias.

AFTERSHOCKS COMPOUND MISERY

Aid agencies already had a large presence in the area after more than 220,000 Indonesians were left dead or missing by the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in December.

An Australian navy ship carrying 60 medical personnel docked in Nias on Saturday morning to help treat hundreds of residents wounded by the magnitude 8.7 quake on Monday night.

“The issue is because of lack of road infrastructure and the lack of ... helicopter support, we are not really sure what is happening in the outlying areas,” George McGuire, commander of HMAS Kanimbla, told reporters.

In a sign that some roads could reopen soon to vehicles, late on Friday an earthmoving machine was shifting dirt into large cracks near bridges not far from Gunungsitoli, although it was unclear if it would be safe for cars and trucks to use.

S. Samfau, a government official in Teluk Dalam, said there was an urgent need to get the economy going again on an island that was already heavily dependent on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, 125 km to the east, for some of its needs.

“It’s very serious, it’s very sad. All of southern Nias has been hit by the quake,” he said.

On Friday, foreign doctors and medical staff treated the injured in Teluk Dalam in a makeshift hospital set up on verandah of church overlooking what would normally be the picturesque town of some 10,000 people.

Several aftershocks during the night added to residents’ misery.

“A lot of people are not sleeping well. They are fearful or another earthquake or tsunami,” said Brad Quist, 45, an American doctor from Michigan. 

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