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Officials in the earthquake-hit city of Padang, Indonesia, have called off the search for survivors in the rubble of buildings five days after the disaster. The focus has turned to bringing aid and medical help to survivors in the city and the surrounding areas. At least 1,000 people have died and at least 1,000 remain missing after the earthquake struck last Wednesday. Reporter Ann Dornfeld visited a village near Padang.
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is the World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH, Boston. Indonesian officials in West Sumatra say some villages engulfed by landslides after last week’s earthquake will be left as mass graves. A spokesman said money would be better spent on the living than on retrieving about 400 bodies believed to be buried under the mud and rocks. Some semblance of normal life is returning to the provincial capital, Padang, but bad weather is hampering efforts to get aid to outlying areas. Reporter Ann Dornfeld visited one of them. She sent us this story from the village of Bungus Timur, about 12 miles south of Padang.
ANN DORNFELD: Corrugated metal roofs rest intact on small piles of rubble. A house with a missing wall reveals what appears to be a teenager’s bedroom, complete with a poster of a pop star still tacked to a remaining wall. The men of Bungus Timur are crowded around an aid truck that’s just arrived with emergency supplies. The fat bags of tarps, blankets, and toothpaste sit within reach, but there aren’t enough to go around, and the villagers are debating who should get help first.
[Villagers speaking Malay].
DORNFELD: All 40-year-old Ernawati can do is watch. Women here don’t have a say in such matters. Ernawati goes by only one name. That’s common in Indonesia. She works in the rice fields, husking grains in a small wooden mill.
ERNAWATI: [speaking Maylay].
DORNFELD: Ernawati had been in the fields all day and just arrived home to her three children when the earthquake hit.
ERNAWATI: [speaking Maylay].
INTERPRETER: I screamed, “God Almighty! God Almighty!” Everything shook. My house cracked, and the houses around me crumbled. I thought it was doomsday! Our house is no longer safe. We are sleeping on the street under a plastic sheet.
DORNFELD: Ernawati says her children are in shock.
ERNAWATI: [speaking Maylay].
INTERPRETER: Especially my youngest child is traumatized because of the quake. Every time I try to take him near the house he runs away.”
DORNFELD: In the four days since the earthquake, the family has eaten only donated instant noodles and rice. They cook them in river water. Ernawati says they can’t afford to buy vegetables.
ERNAWATI: [speaking Maylay].
INTERPRETER: I get paid in rice – about three kilos a day. That’s worth about a dollar fifty.
DORNFELD: Her husband works in the rice fields, too, when there’s work.
ERNAWATI: [speaking Maylay].
INTERPRETER: My husband and other men in this village also collect sand from the banks of the river to sell for construction.
DORNFELD: The sand Ernawati’s husband gathers is mixed into cement and used to lay bricks.
People in West Sumatra say unscrupulous builders often dilute their cement mixtures with extra sand. Some say that might explain why so many of the destroyed buildings in the region are now piles of bricks, while wooden structures remain mostly intact. It’s time for Ernawati to go back to the rice fields. The farmer has work for her today, and she needs her paycheck of rice.
But with her house destroyed, what she really needs is some money.
ERNAWATI: [speaking Maylay].
DORNFELD: She says, “Maybe after people rebuild their houses they’ll need more sand, and the men can get more work. But right now,” she says, “our life is only getting more difficult.” For the World, I’m Ann Dornfeld in West Sumatra, Indonesia.
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