6.2 earthquake rocks Indonesia, 5,100+ dead

[HurricaneBill]

Why do these people have to suffer so much? They have already had their share of nature's fury.

Unfortunately, the reason is geographical location.

Just like the Midwest U.S. suffers frequent tornadoes and the Philippines suffers frequent typhoons.

[wxmann_91]

Just like the Midwest U.S. suffers frequent tornadoes and the Philippines suffers frequent typhoons.

And like California's quakes, Florida and Gulf Coast's hurricanes... etc.

There are few regions not prone to natural disasters. And, unfortunately, generally speaking around the world, there are few regions that are prepared to handle one.

Also, one event can lead to another (in this case the Boxing Day quake probably induced enough extra stress to eventually rupture the fault for the March Nias quake and the recent one). It's not bad luck, it's that a quake caused a chain reaction that led to other deadly quakes.

[AussieMark]

isn't it also like seismic gap theory

i.e stress is elevated on one section of the falt so that makes the next part a target for a quake

u say being due with earthquakes more so than with hurricanes as quakes are based on the stress levels of the plates

[AussieMark]

Main hospital in Indonesia overwhelmed

BANTUL, Indonesia - The main hospital in the district hardest hit by Indonesia's killer earthquake is running short of blood and splints. Victims cram corridors and the parking lot, sleeping on scraps of cardboard, some waiting an entire day for care.

Four days after the quake struck the Indonesian island of Java, patients occupied every available spot Wednesday in the hot, dirty hospital in Bantul district. The stench of urine and trash wafted through the main hall, where more than 150 victims lay on the floor just inches apart, a cracked roof overhead.

Many were still wearing the clothes they had on when the magnitude-6.3 quake struck early Saturday, killing more than 6,200 people and injuring some 30,000 in this region of rice farming communities.

"Ninety percent of the victims have fractures," said Bantul Hospital's emergency coordinator, Dr. Hidayat, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.

"We are short of splints, gauze, even beds," he said. "The minute we get fresh splits, they are gone."

Medical supplies, rice, water and tarps were delivered to the disaster zone Wednesday to help about 650,000 displaced people, but many said the international aid was taking too long to get there.

Doctors said there have been few amputations, unlike the hundreds of victims who lost limbs after the massive 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed 131,000 people in Indonesia's remote Aceh province alone.

"We were much better off here in terms of health services, which were intact" and accessible, said Dr. Vijay Nanth of the World Health Organization.

After the tsunami, it took weeks for the massive aid effort to reach full speed. Much of the provincial capital Banda Aceh was destroyed and the region at the tip of Sumatra island was cut off for days after the disaster.

These factors led to long delays in which injuries festered, and emergency medical teams swamped with casualties had to act quickly to save lives.

The latest disaster happened on central, densely populated Java. While the destruction was widespread, covering hundreds of square miles of mostly farming communities to the south of the ancient city of Yogyakarta, roads remained open and emergency medical aid arrived quickly.

One exception was Handoyo, a 60-year-old rice farmer, who had to have his crushed right leg amputated below the knee after being unable to get treatment at three overcrowded hospitals.

"There were too many victims and it was a little bit late," he said at a hospital in Solo, about three hours' drive from Bantul. "My right leg kept bleeding for more than two days, until it became rotten."

At least 45 community health centers and 44 primary health units were damaged by the quake, the United Nations said. Several portable field hospitals and at least 10 mobile clinics have been set up to cope with the injuries, it said.

Bantul Hospital continues to receive about 50 patients a day — some brought in the back of pickup trucks or on broken doors used as makeshift stretchers.

It is packed with more than 400 victims and their families — about four times its normal capacity. Since Saturday, its approximately 30 doctors have seen more than 2,000 patients, Hidayat said.

With 135,000 houses destroyed by the quake, many patients have no homes to return to.

Instead, the hospital grounds have become home to many.

"My roof fell on me. It cracked my knee," said Jupriharjono, 70, lying at the entrance to the hospital, still wearing the same clothes as when he was wheeled in on Saturday.

Others lay on the ground, near garbage and used needles, bandages and gloves. Family members fanned those exposed to the blazing sun in the hospital driveway.

Kamenen, a 33-year-old housewife, said she was brought to the hospital with a broken leg on Saturday afternoon, but wasn't registered until after midnight.

"I was given no medicine to relieve the pain. And they finally operated on me on Sunday morning," she said as she lay on pieces of cardboard and the door of her ruined house.

Conditions have improved at hospitals in less severely hit areas. Parking lots and hallways that were filled with hundreds of victims immediately after the quake are now clear, with most patients now being treated in beds.

[AussieMark]

Indonesia quake toll soars as hospitals strained

BANTUL, Indonesia (AFP) - The number of casualties from the Indonesian quake soared as the United Nations said hospitals were overcrowded and still lacked basic supplies to treat the mass of injured.

The death toll rose to 6,234 while the number of those hurt in the quake more than doubled to some 46,000, with more than 33,000 suffering serious injuries, the social affairs ministry said.

Hospitals in the quake zone were still overwhelmed five days after Saturday's 6.3-magnitude temblor rocked Central Java, with patients spilling out from wards and badly in need of care, a UN official said.

"Most of the hospitals are functioning, but are overloaded. There is a lack of space in the hospitals," said Charlie Higgins, the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Yogyakarta, the main city in the quake zone.

"It's getting out the basic medical supplies to the hospitals that is important," he told AFP.

Foreign rescue teams from China, Qatar, Singapore, and the United States among others have set up field hospitals and lent a hand to help overworked staff at area hospitals.

Higgins said most of those who needed life-saving emergency treatment had been cared for and that aid agencies were now concerned about the long term.

"They are trying to move people out from the wards and beds to their homes. But for some, the homes are ruined," he said. "So that is a problem."

More than 139,000 homes were destroyed or damaged in the quake, according to the social affairs ministry.

At the bustling Bantul General Hospital, the co-ordinating doctor, Hidayat, said the facility was treating about 50 patients, some of whom were lying on cots in the entrance.

"That's because they don't have a house to go home to," Hidayat said.

Sumartini, 33, lay on her side with her right leg in a temporary splint made of cardboard. She had been there since Saturday without surgery.

"I'm waiting for a doctor from Singapore," said Sumartini, whose husband was also at the hospital with eye and leg injuries.

Rescue teams were still looking for bodies, with a team of six Spanish volunteers aided by sniffer dogs combing through the rubble of a village market in hard-hit Bantul district, the Detikcom online news service said.

Amid complaints from residents that aid has been too slow to arrive, Indonesian officials have defended the relief effort while the UN's Higgins offered a relatively upbeat assessment of the situation.

"On the whole, there are enough resources to deal with the emergency," he said.

Wet weather in recent days and clogged roads have hampered distribution of needed supplies by trucks and some survivors were bracing for a sixth night without shelter.

Military and rescue helicopters are delivering badly-needed food to isolated areas, and transporting the injured to hospital.

But hundreds of survivors converged on the governor's complex in Yogyakarta hoping to pick up extra rations -- sacks of rice and parcels of instant noodles -- for their devastated villages.

"We need everything. Our village is the most destroyed in the area, so we want anything we can get," said Wakidgian, 42, from the flattened mountainous village of Dlingo in Bantul.

"We come from an isolated area close to the mountains, so not much help has reached us," said another survivor, Mardain, 32, who had waited for hours for his number to be called.

The World Health Organization (WHO), for its part, urged donor countries to send the "appropriate medicines" to the quake zone.

"There are shortages of some very specific medicines and supplies, including orthopaedic supplies, anaesthetics and antibiotics," Georg Petersen, the WHO's country representative for Indonesia, said in a statement.

"Only appropriate medicines should be sent, and that too in consultation with the national authorities. Previous experience of disasters has shown that inappropriate contributions have only led to confusion."

The WHO said there also was a lack of bed sheets, mattresses and other "consumable medical equipment" like stitching materials, sterile kits for surgeries and x-ray films.

Vice President Yusuf Kalla, who arrived in the disaster zone to oversee relief efforts, said food aid would be delivered once a month, not on a daily basis, to ease the logistical difficulties for local officials.

"That way, the government will only have to work once a month," he was quoted by the state Antara news agency as saying, explaining that each family of four would receive 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of rice per month.