Indonesia's government declared a state
of emergency late on thr night of 28 May 2006 after a quake killed more
than 4,600 people early on 27 May. Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the
emergency period would last three months and the government aimed to complete
"reconstruction and rehabilitation" within a year. "We will
have an emergency period for three months, May till August. The objectives
are providing food, health care and shelter," Kalla told reporters.
"The funds needed are about 1 trillion rupiahs ($100 million) ...
for repairing homes and facilitating people's needs. This figure can change.
It comes from the state budget and international aid." (Reuters)
A 6.3 magnitude quake struck Indonesia
at 5.54 am (local) on 27 May 2006 (22.53 GMT 26 May), with its epicenter
80 km south of the rumbling Merapi volcano in the Indian Ocean, about 37
kilometres south of Yogyakarta, (about 450 kilometres south-east of Jakarta).
It occurred about 33 kilometres beneath the seabed.The quake devastated
nundreds of square kilometers of mostly farming communities in Yogyakarta
province. Power and telephone services are down, acrossmuch of the region.
As many as 450 aftershocks followed, the strongest a magnitude 5.2.
The worst devastation was in the Bantul district, which accounted for three-quarters of the deaths. The quake struck at while many were still in bed. Houses in the area are poorly constructed, and their wooden roofs collapsed on occupants. The worst devastation was in the town of Bantul, which accounted for three-quarters of the deaths. Eighty percent of the homes were flattened. Medical supplies and body bags were arriving at the airport of Yogyakarta,The official death toll jumped to 4,611 on 28 May. Rescue workers dug desperately for survivors and hospitals struggled to cope with the thousands of injured. It is reported that up to 20,000 have been injured and more than 100,000 left homeless after Saturday's earthquake, but the real tally is not yet known for sure. Residents in surrounding villages say there were few people or bodies trapped beneath collapsed houses, which are mostly simple brick and wood structures.
Most of the dead were buried in village graveyards within hours of the disaster, in line with Islamic tradition.
Grieving quake survivors scavenged for food in the debris of their houses on Sunday and pleaded for aid. Hospitals are struggling to cope with the injured. There are not enough nurses or doctors to cope with the load. Hundreds of people crammed the corridors and grounds of Yogyakarta's Bethesda hospital. Doctors struggled to care for the injured, hundreds of whom were lying on plastic sheets, straw mats and newspapers outside overcrowded hospitals, some hooked to intravenous drips dangling from trees. Yogyakarta's Dr Sardjito Hospital received more than 2 000 people and more are being brought in. In the small village on Bantul's outskirts, villagers have set up simple clinics to treat injuries, but are hampered by shortages of medicine and equipment.
Rescue workers dug desperately through rubble for survivors. Thousands of troops and emergency rescue teams joined volunteers who clawed at debris with their bare hands. In hardest-hit Bantul district south of the provincial capital Yogyakarta, the stench of bodies filled the air as soldiers used backhoes to dig through the rubble in one neighborhood that was completely leveled by the temblor.The top priority in the flattened district is to evacuate victims still trapped in the rubble, using heavy equipment.
Torrential rain that fell late on Sunday added to the misery of the homeless, most of whom were living in makeshift shelters constructed from plastic, canvas or cardboard. There is a shortage of tents and tens of thousands camped out in streets, cassava fields and the paths between rice paddies. Clean drinking water is another problem as all 12 water distribution systems in Bantul have been either knocked out completely or are not working properly. Exhausted and grieving survivors scavenged for food and clothes in the brick, wood and tile rubble of their flattened houses.
Relief efforts, however, are bogged down by bureaucracy. Government officials, surprisingly, are reported to have have no sensitivity to the situation, even though this is the fourth destructive quake to hit Indonesia in the last 17 months. The airport in Yogyakarta was closed because of cracks on the runway and the railway from Yogyakarta to nearby Solo was closed after one of the stations collapsed.
The quake has damaged the world-renowned Prambanan temple complex, undoing much of more than 70 years of painstaking reconstruction work. Chunks of broken walls and carvings lay scattered over the ground at the foot of its eight main Hindu shrines. Small temples called "candis" also toppled over.
The quake's epicentre was 80km south of Mount Merapi, and activity at the volcano increased soon after the temblor. A large burst spewed hot clouds and sent debris cascading about 3,5km down its western flank. Mount Merapi, has been rumbling for weeks and sporadically emitting hot lava and highly toxic hot gas.
The country is also battling a spiraling human bird flu case load, a spate of terror attacks by al-Qaeda linked Islamic militants and the threat of eruption from Mount Merapi, just north of the quake zone.
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