As Toll Rises, Aid Trickles In to Quake-Hit Region

In a corner of Santa Maria Church on Thursday, Kasania Lauli, 22, sat and cried.

She wore a bloodstained bandage on her head and there were scratches over her face. She clutched two shirts, her family’s last remaining possessions.

Her husband, Somano Waruwu, 32, was found dead in the rubble of their brick house, hugging the body of their 4-year-old son, Sebastian. Lauli doesn’t know how she survived. Neighbors pulled her half-conscious from the debris of her family’s house on Nias island early Tuesday, six hours after a massive quake struck the region. Lauli was holding the body of her 2-year-old daughter, Lorensia.

“My head is so full,” she said, sobbing. “My husband died, my two children too. I have no one. I don’t know what to do.”

As soldiers and foreign aid workers brought food, medical supplies and rescuers to the stricken island, the bodies of Lauli’s husband and children were among dozens loaded on an army truck from the church Thursday and buried in a Catholic cemetery. All three family members were placed in a single coffin.

The United Nations said 624 people had been confirmed dead on Nias, Simeulue and a neighboring group of islands known as the Banyaks. Indonesian officials have said the death toll could reach between 1,000 and 2,000 on the islands off the west coast of Sumatra, some of the most isolated in the Indonesian archipelago.

The magnitude 8.7 quake was one of the world’s largest temblors in the last century. Geologists said it was an aftershock of the magnitude 9 quake that struck the same region Dec. 26, generating a powerful tsunami and killing as many as 281,000 people in 12 nations.

Monday night’s quake destroyed most of the main street of Gunungsitoli, the largest town on Nias. Rows of two- and three-story brick buildings known as ruko, with shops on the ground floor and homes upstairs, collapsed while residents slept.

On Thursday, blackened corpses were still visible in the rubble, crushed under falling bricks and corrugated metal roofs. The smell of decaying bodies wafted through the town.

Some residents attempted to dig out the bodies, wrapping their hands in plastic bags. They were aided by several cranes and bulldozers shipped to the island, but the job was made more difficult by heavy rains that flooded the ruins.

Rescue crews pulled three people alive from the rubble, an 11-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl and a woman, news agencies reported.

International rescuers abandoned their search today for survivors in Gunungsitoli. “There are no [more] survivors here,” said Olaf Lingjerde, a U.N. search-and-rescue official. “We found one person alive [Thursday] morning; that was the last person. It’s been 24 hours since then, and there’s been nothing.”

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited Nias on Thursday and acknowledged that assistance had been slow to reach the hard-hit islands.

“Bad damage to roads and bridges and bad weather are disturbing distribution of aid and the relief effort,” Yudhoyono said.

Standing in a downpour, the president hugged a sobbing young girl who told him that her brother and sister had died. The president’s wife, Kristiani Herawati, stroked the hair of another weeping girl and told her, “Be patient. We will help you.”

Many survivors have complained of food shortages, and some said they had eaten little since the quake struck. Social Affairs Minister Bachtiar Chamsyah, who accompanied the president, said he expected the relief effort to improve.

“We admit the distribution has been slow,” the minister said. “We can understand that people are dissatisfied, but thanks be to God, the situation is getting better.”

Many residents returned to their homes to recover whatever rain-soaked possessions they could find. Some could only enter the ruins by climbing through holes dug in the rubble.

The earthquake cracked and ruptured many of the island’s roads, leaving large craters in the asphalt and making many streets impassable for all vehicles but motorbikes.

Residents of other parts of Indonesia, anxious for word of their relatives in the quake zone, took a 12-hour ferry ride to Nias from Sibolga on the main island of Sumatra.

Indonesian soldiers were pulling four bodies from a ruined building near the harbor when the boat arrived. Two young men and a girl stepped off the ferry and ran to the building. They immediately recognized the body of an old man and began sobbing.

Santa Maria Church, the largest church on the predominantly Christian island, lost its bell tower and three-story parish house in the temblor. It has become a gathering place for survivors and is also being used as a makeshift morgue.

Residents who pulled bodies from the rubble dropped them off in the front yard of the church. “We have buried about 60 bodies,” said a priest at the church who gave his name only as Father Michael.

In the neighborhood of Desa Onozitoli, on a hill in Gunungsitoli, Firman Waruwu opened his home to 40 friends and relatives whose houses were destroyed. Some were injured but were too scared to go downhill for treatment.

“We have nothing to eat but bananas from the garden and a little stock of instant noodles,” he said. “We asked for some food from the nearest relief post, but they said they had no food. It hasn’t arrived yet.”

Gunungsitoli General Hospital suffered extensive damage but was crammed with more than 70 seriously injured patients.

The operating room and radiology rooms were damaged, and doctors had to perform surgeries in other rooms.

More than 20 quake victims lay on beds in the lobby.

Dr. Syafran Situmorang, dispatched from the Sumatran city of Medan to run the hospital, said some of the most seriously injured were being flown to Sumatra for treatment but that too few helicopters were available.

“Today, we have five people who should have been sent to Sibolga and Medan,” the doctor said. “But because we have no transportation, we could only send two to Medan.”

Treating the injured also was complicated by a shortage of medical staffers.

“Many of the local doctors and nurses are absent,” he said. “Perhaps they are busy looking for their families.”

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Special correspondent Tiba reported from Gunungsitoli and Times staff writer Paddock from Kuta, Indonesia. Dinda Jouhana of The Times’ Jakarta Bureau contributed to this report.