Targeting 100,000 affected people

Its 4a.m. in the morning. I got up an hour ago and packed for my trip from Jakarta to Padang. The flight leaves at 6 a.m. I just checked the boys who are sleeping soundly. They haven't seen much of their Dad since the quake struck just over a week ago. Last night my eldest boy Ablai said, "Dad, I don't want you to go." I have heard that many times but it never lessens the pangs of departure.

I have been in Jakarta the last few days working on an appeal to increase our support from the current 5,000 families to 20,000 families which is over 100,00 affected people. Last night we finalised the appeal and posted it on the web. It is almost 19 million US dollars. We have about US$ 7 million to date so I hope the remained will come in quickly from our very loyal member national societies.

This revised emergency appeal is in response to a request from the Indonesia Red Cross (Palang Merah Indonesia/PMI) to enable the national society to provide more relief and early recovery support to those most affected by the earthquakes. Since the preliminary appeal went out, casualty and damage figures have risen considerably, revealing increased needs which PMI is seeking to meet. The appeal seeks support to scale up and provide assistance to 20,000 families (100,000 individuals) through the continuation of relief distribution of non-food items, shelter, psycho-social support, water and sanitation intervention, health and medical provisions and logistics support.

If times permits I will post an update tonight. Gotta run to the airport. Bob

Sumatra quake: Aid worker's diary

Yesterday Tuesday 6 October, was a hectic day for all of us involved in this massive relief operation. I am now back in Jakarta for a few days working closely with my good friend Pak Iyang Sukandar,Secretary General of the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI). Pak Iyang is a veteran of of 30 years of disasters both man made and natural.

A young boy surveys all that is left of his house. Photo: IFRC

Yesterday we spent a lot of time discussing increasing the number of families we will be providing relief material to from 5,000 to 20,000. We will also target 20, 000 families which is approximately 100,000 people for tents and for transitional shelters which will see them through the next year or two until petrmanent houses can be rebuilt. That means our Appeal for help will increase from about US$6 million to US$17 million. A big part of Pak Iyang's and my job now is to raise that money so it entails a lot of meetings, lobbeying, report writing and negotiations. Today I got valuable assistance from Peder Danmm from the Danish Red Cross, Jean-Philippe Tizi, Canadian Red Cross, and Naomi from the German Red Cross. The way my colleagues from other national Red Cross societies pitch in and help so selflessly is something I have come to treasure in this organisation. Wayne Ulrich, our head of operations in West Sumatra is hanging in there strongly. We must of had ten phone conversations today, the first one at 6 a.m. on getting a second helicopter for today. I managed to get Colin Tuck in from his oil rig duties today and to fly food in to remote villages. To give a field perspective, I quote from Patrick Fuller, my communications coordinator on the ground and in the air in West Sumatra,
Patrick ravelled to remote villages close to the epicentre of last week's deadly quake in Indonesia and tells his story.

A good nights sleep at last! I was so exhausted I was oblivious to the mosquitoes and the snoring of my room-mate. Into the office by 7.30 to catch up with Wayne, who is co-ordinating our operation. He's concerned that there are still many settlements higher up in the hills where no help has reached.

I'm hoping to go up in our helicopter later but the heavens seem to be conspiring against me; it's been pouring with rain all morning. Not great for the soaking wet volunteers outside who are trying to load tarpaulins and blankets onto waiting trucks.

The weather means I can catch up on some correspondence. In these situations it's easy to forget that there are countless people on the other side of the world who are involved in the operation. Our headquarters in Geneva launched an emergency appeal to support 30,000 families over the next six months with food, clean water and shelter.

“ Every house below us has been flattened and villagers wave, not in greeting but in desperation ”

This means I need to work at making sure that the disaster remains high on the media agenda. I think we have a couple of days before they lose interest.

I talk to Wayne about the possibility of getting some journalists up in the chopper to visit our medical team at work. We agree that the team can be dropped and the pilot will make a double trip. I call the BBC to see if they can go at short notice; they're happy to but it's still pouring outside.

At midday I get word that the medical team has left and we should get down to the landing pad. I just manage to wolf down more cold rice and an incinerated fish (or was it chicken..?) before dashing to the helipad. Alistair Leithead, the BBC correspondent arrives with his cameraman DC and we're quickly in the air.

All of a sudden a whole new world opens up. Seeing the disaster scene from the air really brings home the scale of the damage as we fly northwest.

We fly over an ancient lava field. Over thousands of years the rivers of lava had turned into verdant green ridges, now scarred with brown gashes where the hillsides have simply slipped down into the valley below.

It's here that the damage is worst. Every house below us has been flattened and villagers wave, not in greeting but in desperation. We land in a paddy field to find the clinic. I was convinced the rotor blades were going to hit a palm tree but John the pilot, a cool-headed Kiwi, could clearly land on a sixpence.

No-one had reached the village because of numerous landslides which had blocked the road ahead and behind. When we arrived the team had just finished stitching up a long wound down the back of a three-year-old child who had been lucky to survive.

Back in the air we fly over a valley which looks like a war zone - bare hillsides with huge trees lying scattered at the bottom of the valley. We land where a large group of villagers are waving beneath us.

As they crowd around us, my colleague Hari from the Indonesian Red Cross asks them what help they need most.

As one they shout - 'RICE'. Their stocks have run out and they can't get out to the nearest town two hours away to buy more. The scene is interrupted by a comic-surreal moment as a dog-fight suddenly breaks out and Alastair goes flying in the melee.

Once we land back in Padang it's straight back to the office for a co-ordination meeting. A logistics Emergency Response Unit from the British Red Cross have arrived. Their job is to handle all the relief goods arriving by air and sea.

I recognise a couple of them - Jamie and Peter, veterans of countless disaster operations. We count the years since we last met. Despite the fact that we always meet in the worst places it's reassuring to know that the relief supplies are in good hands and will be quickly despatched to the field.

It's almost midnight, but I still have to share some photos I took from the helicopter with Reuters. Maybe tomorrow will be less hectic… somehow I doubt it.

"All of a sudden a whole new world opens up. Seeing the disaster scene from the air really brings home the scale of the damage as we fly northwest".
Photo: Bob McKerrow

Diary from the earthquake in West Sumatra.

The Red Cross relief operation in support of a huge number of people affected by the earthquake last week in West Sumatra is runing well. At 6.30 am a large convoy of PMI (Indonesian Red Cross) trucks with vital relief items left for the field. We have two helicopters flying today into remote mountainous regions not yet accessible by road. One is flying in medical teams dealing with the serious injuries and the other food. I don;t have time to write any more but I post a story below that my colleague Patrick Fuller wrote yesterday. Patrick is our communications guy based in KL.Patrick and I have worked in about five major disaster so we are close friends.


Finally, we arrived at our destination, a mobile clinic set up by a doctor and eight nurses who worked at the Indonesian Red Cross hospital in Bogor in Western Java.



Volunteers of Indonesian Red Cross prepare meals for their colleagues who are working on evacuation process in Padang City. "It's hard to find any food shops open so we have lunch at a communal kitchen set up by the local authorities outside the local government office" "It is strictly no frills. Sitting cross-legged eating cold rice with a spicy sardine gravy with my right hand proves quite challenging". (photo by: Wayne Ulrich/International Federation)


Patrick Fuller of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies travels to an open-air clinic in Pariaman district, which was close to the epicentre of Wednesday's deadly quake in Indonesia
Off to an 0530 start this morning, thanks to the heat and mosquitoes in my airless room.

It was a slightly fretful night as I was conscious of staying on the second floor of a large concrete structure, perhaps not the best option given the continued aftershocks.

I wanted to visit one of the health posts set up in Pariaman district, which was at the epicentre of the quake.

The road was choked with a bizarre array of organisations wanting to do good, from a squad of teenagers on mopeds with Dynasty Computers delivering boxes of noodles to the homeless, to members of the Singapore armed forces and the Indonesian 4x4 club.

Most people here live along the road and house after house had collapsed. We came across Hans Polak from the Swiss Red Cross, who is the team leader for Swiss Rescue, a 125-member team who flew in with 18 search and rescue dogs.

Hans sees shelter as the main need for the recovery programme. He had just visited a village in the area where every one of the 168 houses had collapsed but remarkably only 4 people had died.

But 80% of their wells had been destroyed, so providing clean water is a priority need that the Red Cross will be addressing.

It's hard to find any food shops open so we have lunch at a communal kitchen set up by the local authorities outside the local government office.

It is strictly no frills. Sitting cross-legged eating cold rice with a spicy sardine gravy with my right hand proves quite challenging.

'Amazing escape'

Finally, we arrived at our destination, a mobile clinic set up by a doctor and eight nurses who worked at the Indonesian Red Cross hospital in Bogor in Western Java. The clinic was operating out of an open shelter next to a semi-collapsed house.

Dr Arfan and his team had been seeing an average of 50 patients a day, about 20% had injuries stemming from the earthquake.

Nur Asmi was lying on the makeshift examination bed, smiling at me while a nurse squeezed a massive blood clot from a huge gash in her head.

Having had her wound stitched up she calmly hopped on her bike and cycled home.

She had been cooking the family supper when the earthquake brought her roof down. A beam struck her just before she managed to escape. Amazing, that she and her five children survived.

The roof was sitting awkwardly on the ground concealing the rubble of the house underneath.

Like many of the children in these villages her kids had laid a small branch across the road to slow the traffic.

They stand in the road holding out cardboard boxes with a scrawled message saying "we are hungry" written on it.

No-one is actually going hungry, but the earthquake has disrupted food supplies arriving into local markets and people are making the most of the passing well-wishers, who drive through dispensing bottled water, biscuits and dried noodles.

Tomorrow we are setting up a mobile kitchen in the area, just so that people can manage during these difficult days.

Photos from the Earthquake in West Sumatra

The relief operation is into full swing with the helicopter and Red Cross (PMI) medical personnel getting to out to many villages today. The supply chain is open wide and distribution of key relief items going out. The blood bank is operating well, PSP (counselling) teams and Restoring Family Links teams are working well with the affected people. Swiss Red Crioss/ Government Resue teams working hard round the clock. Assessment continue as all the figures of deaths and destruction rise.

Here are some photos I have taken in the last few days.


Damage in China Town, Padang. Below Photo: Bob McKerrow

More damage in China Town
<The main hotel that collapsed. It was a six story building compressed into one and a bit stories. Photo: Bob McKerrow


The PMI blood bank operates outside . (below)

A Swiss rescue worker at the airport with his dog awaiting deployment.
A village wiped out by a mudslides. Many deaths.

A water buffalo, oblivious to the damage, resents my arrival. The house in the background rests on the ground.
Typical amages in the remote and inaccessible areas below.
More damaged houses. Over 100,000 more like this below.




Bob McKerrow left, and Colin Tuck ( from Fox Gkacier NZ)our daring Kiwi helicopter pilot. Thanks to Tucky working closeby, we were able to start on aerial assessment within 15 hours, identify people dying because of crush injurues, and fly in doctors.


Chairman of PMI, Mar'ie Muhammad comforting a child in a very isolated village we visited by chopper. (below).


Here is the latest from the BBC website:

The closer you get to the earthquake's epicentre the worse the damage gets.

First the road becomes blocked to vehicles. Then even motorbikes cannot get through, and soon you can only walk and clamber over the landslides to reach the communities perhaps hardest hit by this disaster.

Homes were just swallowed up here as the quake shook the land from the hillsides, tearing down everything, destroying houses and crushing hundreds of people below tonnes of earth.

The size of the landslides are astonishing - massive tears in the jungle where soil and trees have been ripped from the slopes and dumped into the valleys.


Dawianis Ardo is digging. Others are helping him - smashing concrete beams with the back of an axe, pulling at debris with wire cable and shifting bucket-loads of soil from the hole.

The patch of earth, trees and concrete is what is left of three homes. One was empty, but the two crushed into each other and buried with earth from the mountain which slipped off into the valley were not.

Inside were nine adults and seven children - some of them playing marbles just outside the house when the earthquake struck.

"We found two bodies yesterday - they had been crushed to death - we expect to find the other 14 bodies today," he said.

They were his cousins.

"If we don't find them today I will dig for another five days - that will be a week - and then I will leave them to God."

Crushed to death

A path has been trodden across the face of the landslide where the road used to be and people were carefully making their way across.

I just sat here and prayed

Zaimar
Earthquake survivor
The situation just worsened further along the track - more houses flattened, more landslides scarring the hillside and wider cracks in the road.

Zaimar sat outside her collapsed home as the men dug at the crushed wooden beams to big out their food supplies and possessions.

She described what it was like when the quake hit, kneeling down and showing us how she sat to stop herself falling as the shockwave threw everything and everybody around.

She began to cry - to sob - as she remembered those terrifying moments when she was convinced the world was going to end.

"I just sat here and prayed," she said, still crying uncontrollably.

Her family were all unhurt, but the shock has affected her deeply and her neighbours lost relatives in the rubble.

Waiting for help

At another landslide an ornately tiled porch stands now like a platform overlooking the valley below.

The home which was behind it is crushed and buried, along with it a family of 10 people.

Further along, the route is blocked by a house teetering on the edge of another gaping scar - the only way forward to the villages and communities ahead is through someone's front room.

One village is packed with people - all asking when the aid will come. A police helicopter circled overhead suggesting they have not been forgotten about.

But they feel abandoned and alone. They have rice and basic supplies, but with no electricity and a road it will take many weeks to repair, they are afraid of their new-found isolation, hoping help will come to them soon.

Three-thousand dead is what the government has estimated.

Here amid the destroyed homes, with so many stories of relatives being buried alive, it seems as though it could be even more.




Coordinations meetings. Our first coordination meeting.

DEATH, DESTRUCTION AND HOPE IN SUMATRA EARTHQUAKE.

It's almost 2 am on Sunday morning. Yesterday, Saturday 3 October is one of those days etched in my life and brain forever.

I nabbed 4 hours sleep last night and woke up restless thinking of all those people trapped under buildings in Padang, perhaps 2000 of them. who knows. I awoke about 5.30 am, had breakfast with Pak Irman from the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) and then went walkabout alone.

50 metres down the road a six story building is crumpled into one story. Like a squashed tube of tooth paste, the other floors ooze out the side in the form of pulverized rubble. No one has come out alive yet and I am told that 20 people are in there.

I WALK FOR AN HOUR SEEING DEATH AND DESTRUCTION. THANK GOD THE SWISS RED CROSS/GOVERNMENT TEAM HAVE WORKED THROUGH THE NIGHT WITH THEIR LOCATER DOGS AND SEEM OPTIMISTIC. Red Cross people from 8 countries have come to help. We are starting to get on top of the relief phase but a huge task ahead of us. I have ordered another helicopter today so the PMI medical people can get out to those villages cut off and make sure people don't die of injuries and infection. Juggling priorities is difficult.

I don't want to dwell much more on the death I have seen, but in a trip to China town where a high school collapsed, 20 or so girls in fresh bright uniforms stand outside their flattened school, hoping, willing and praying their class mates will be rescued. Hope diminishes by the minute as tears flood down their round cheeks.


The Indonesian Red Cross Blood Bank continues work outside after their building collapsed. Photo: Bob McKerrow


The PMI blood bank collapsed in the quake and I visited it with Pak Mar'ie, Chairman PMI. Outside on the forecourt, Red Cross blood transfusion experts take blood out in the open. The 200 units they have taken in the last few days have saved many lives. I lie down on a bed and give a bag full. It is a token gesture but I feel better after that. That's me, its not the organisation. People take my blood, a pound of fles here or there, but I give it when I choose.

Then down to the Red Cross HQ. A hive of activity. I run out of words when i see these volunteers giving all. The most difficult task are the rescue people who have to take the dead bodies out of the rubble and with dignity, put them in bags, and take them to the morgue for identification. But I was talking to one of the team and he said,"whole bodies are rare, we find a hand there, a finger here, another part there, and we try to make sure we keep the complete person in one bag." It is so important for the relatives to see their whole relative," he said in such a caring way. I admire his commiyment to human dignity.

I need some sleep so I will paste from Al Jazeera. I had a brief interview with Veronica Pedrosat today.


Rescuers are continuing to dig through the rubble of collapsed buildings on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, several days after a deadly earthquake struck the region, but officials say hopes of finding survivors alive are rapidly diminishing.

Only a handful of survivors had been pulled from the rubble by Saturday, three days since the 7.6 magnitude quake toppled tens of thousands of buildings in the coastal town of Padang and surrounding villages.

Up to 4,000 people are believed to be trapped under the rubble following Wednesday's earthquake, the United Nations estimates.

Villages wiped out

Jusuf Kalla Indonesia's vice-president said he did not expect many more people to be pulled alive from the devastated landscape.

"Most people here are trapped and buried inside buildings. You cannot hope for more survivors. I think most of them have died," Kalla, speaking during a visit to Pariaman, north of Padang, told reporters.


Al Jazeera's Wayne Hay, reporting from Tandikat in Pariaman, said that three villages had been completely wiped out after a hillside collapsed during the quake.

"What we can see here now is just a scene of absolute devastation - it is covered with mud, dirt after landslides came tumbling down into the valley," he said.

"There really isn't even any sign of debris here, just mud and trees."

Rescue workers were unable to reach the area, normally just a 90 minute drive from Padang, for two days because the roads were cut by landslides and debris.

"We have seen a very small number of military people here and they have one digger, one piece of heavy equipment ... so it is going to be a long road ahead," Hay said.

Estimates of how many people were killed in Pariaman vary, with one tribal chief telling Al Jazeera that at least 300 had been killed.

Bob McKerrow, the head of the Indonesia delegation of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, said aerial photos showed the extent of the damage in the mountainous outlying regions.

He said hundreds of villages were in the disaster zone, and that the few he had visited had all reported deaths and serious injuries.

"Typically in every village, there's an old woman with a broken back with a gash on her arm and she's not moving. That's why we're sending in helicopters with medical teams," he said.

Death and destruction

The official death toll for the region currently stands at 777, with hundreds more injured.

More than 20,000 buildings have been destroyed and 2,400 people hospitalised across seven districts, Priyadi Kardono, a spokesman for the national disaster agency, said.




Al Jazeera's Veronica Pedrosa, reporting from Padang, said that foreign aid teams were continuing to arrive at the town's airport and still believed that some of the victims could be found alive.

"It is going to be very difficult for anyone to have survived beneath the rubble, but experts say it is possible on the fourth day depending on the injuries sustained, the strength of the person involved and whether they have managed to get drops of water," she said.

"There are signs of life here and that is confirmed by the international rescue teams with their sniffer dogs."

A number people were believed to be trapped under the rubble of the ruined Dutch-colonial era Ambacang Hotel in the town.

"We think there are eight people alive in there. One sent an SMS to a relative in a village, who got the text at 3pm [08:00 GMT] yesterday," Arkamelvi Karmani, an army officer involved in the rescue operation, said.

The message reportedly called for help and implored rescuers: "Be careful that the excavator doesn't cause the building to collapse on us."

Rescuers were building a tunnel into the rubble to try to reach them.

A long day in the field

It is almost 10 pm in the evening. Just finished a coordinating meet to ensure we reach the maximum number of people tomorrow in the remote areas requiring shelter, clean water, medical assistance, food and pother basics.

This morning I went to the airport at 4.30 am and flew on a chartered flight from Jakarta to the earthquake affected area of Padan. On the plane were Indonesian red Cross orthoaedic surgeons, soup kitchen managers, PSP (physiological councillors) relief and logistics experts, restoring family links team, all from the Red Cross. Some Japanese rescue team members were aboard with their rescue dogs.

Flew with Colin Tuck and PMI colleagues to inspect affected villages. What devastation ! I spend time with one elderly woman with a broken back and a large gash in her arm. Tuckey went back to the helicopter and got the firs aid kit and we dresses her room. I will write about that later. Came back after 3 hours and then two planes with shelter materials arrived from Australia. We are moving relief supplies out quickly and the medical and rescue teams continue their work.

I have found a hotel somewhere in town with water. no windows but water.

Down the road nearly one hundred children are buried under a collapsed school and rescue teams with dogs are working hard through the night with the hope of finding them alive. I hope I can sleep. I must close my batteries are almost flat. I have no electricity to charge the batteries. Good night.

The quake is very bad in Sumatra !

It is really bad out there.

Just a quick update on Indonesia. Wayne Ulrich returned one and a half hours ago from a seven hour aerial assessment of the remote parts of the earthquake affected region. An experienced campaigner who has seen many civil wars in Africa for MSF, the Tsunami for CARE described what he saw today in the remote hills and valleys of the greater Padang area as like seeing the effects of an Atomic bomb being dropped on a huge region. He reported houses, mosques, clinics and schools flattened, and on hilly spurs, villages wiped out by landslides. When they landed in villages people walked about dazed not knowing whether to laugh or cry. No medical help visible as being walked about injured or sick.

This will be the Red Cross challenge, getting to the most vulnerable, the most affected in the remote areas.

Wayme and PMI experts went in with Tuckey, Colin Tuck, the NZ helicopters pilot I spoke of on my last posting. He was brilliant and took Wayne into all the remote villages.

I am going in tomorrow with Chairman PMI (Indonesian red Cross) to meet with Wayne and his dedicated PMI colleagues to get their assessment. Also Tuckey will fly us to drop in medical help and food.

It is a big quake and I have that nervous feeling it is bigger than expected.

600 people dead to date but that toll will double ? But it is the living we strive for, we plan for and live for.

Just about to grab a few hours sleep before a 4 am start. Flight to Padang at 6 am.

S-l-e-e-p w-e n-e-e--d t-e-l-l a-l-l p-e-o-p-l-e.

Bob