PEMENANG (Indonesia) • A woman was pulled alive from a collapsed building on Lombok yesterday, two days after the earthquake struck.
Ms Nadia Revanale, 23, was shopping in a minimart in Pemenang at the time of the tremor.
Neighbours heard cries for help from the mangled concrete and alerted rescuers, who took four hours to extract her. She was then taken away by an ambulance.
"First, we used our hands to clear the debris, then hammers, chisels and machines to slowly remove the pieces," said Mr Marcos Eric, a volunteer rescue worker from a mining company. "It took many hours, but we are thankful it worked and this person was found alive."
It was a rare moment of joy since the earthquake struck, killing more than 100 people on the tourist island. Lombok had already been hit by a magnitude-6.4 earthquake on July 29 that killed 17 people and briefly stranded several hundred trekkers on the slopes of a volcano.
The National Disaster Management Agency said more than 20,000 people have been displaced by the quake as it brought down or damaged some 13,000 houses, and many of those people were living in open areas and in need of food, medicine and other aid.
Mr Riduan, a 45-year-old man whose house was partially destroyed, said he had received no assistance and had bought food himself. "We don't get anything," he said as he tried to retrieve documents from what was left of his home.
Aid agency Oxfam said it was providing clean drinking water and tarpaulin shelters to 5,000 survivors, but the needs were much greater.
"Thousands... are under open skies and in need of drinking water, food, medical supplies and clothes," it said in a statement. "Clean drinking water is scarce due to the extremely dry weather conditions leading up to the disaster."
REUTERS