Rescuers find survivor 5 days after quake

GUNUNG SITOLI, Indonesia — Rescuers on Saturday pulled out alive an Indonesian man trapped for five days in the rubble of his three-story shophouse, giving some rare cheer to residents of these islands devastated by tremors.

Singaporean and Mexican rescue workers freed the man on the Indonesian island of Nias after digging down to him through chunks of concrete and other debris in a tense operation lasting about seven hours.

Separately, an Australian navy helicopter carrying up to 11 people crashed on the same island, the defense department said later on Saturday. Australian media reported that nine people were killed.

The navy Sea King helicopter crashed near the town of Gunung Sitoli on Nias, off the west coast of Sumatra in the afternoon, a defense statement said.

The helicopter was from an Australian navy transport ship that arrived from Singapore Saturday after three months providing tsunami relief at the Indonesian province of Aceh.

Up to 11 people, including the helicopter's crew of three, were on board, the statement said.

No details of casualties were released. But the Australian Associated Press quoted transport ship HMAS Kanimbla captain Commander George McGuire as saying nine people had been killed.

'It's a miracle, it's a miracle!'
The man rescued on Saturday, a 42-year-old ethnic Chinese man, Hendra, was placed on a stretcher and taken to hospital. His two daughters and wife were presumed to have been killed.

“I think my daughter was crushed by a concrete slab,” he told reporters from his hospital bed. “I was behind and everything collapsed.”

Soldiers had heard a voice calling for help from the rubble in the morning and alerted the foreign rescue teams, who managed to get food and water to Hendra while digging down.

“It’s a miracle, it’s a miracle! I can’t believe what is happening in my heart and mind right now,” said Omar Flores, 30, a rescuer from Mexico City who was drenched in sweat.

Around 1,500 Indonesian soldiers have been digging through the rubble of houses destroyed in the magnitude 8.7 quake on Monday night.

But rescuers who pulled several survivors from buildings earlier this week had said there was little hope of finding anyone else alive.

The U.N. has said 1,300 people may have died in Gunung Sitoli alone, and there are concerns the death toll could rise as they reach isolated parts of the island that have been cut off by landslides and damage to roads.

Deaths have also been reported on nearby islands.

As the rescue teams dug towards Hendra on Saturday, workers pulled a male body from the ruins of a house next door to wails of grief from relatives.

Aid arrives
Relief workers are trying to reach thousands of people cut off from aid in the area off Sumatra island near Aceh province, where another quake in December triggered a tsunami that killed or left missing nearly 300,000 people along Indian Ocean shores.

“People (aid workers) are moving out of town for the first time in a serious way today,” Oxfam official Alex Renton told Reuters by telephone from Gunung Sitoli.

“Outside town, things are still very unclear.”

Renton estimated only about 10 percent of the 2,100 square mile island had been assessed by aid agencies.

Reuters correspondents who rode by motorbike from Gunung Sitoli along the road to Teluk Dalam town some 75 miles south on Friday saw widespread damage to houses, bridges and roads and little sign of aid reaching people.

Thousands of people are facing food and water shortages because the quake destroyed water mains and markets.

“There is no problem with the amount of food. The problem lies with the distribution,” Vice President Jusuf Kalla told reporters after meeting local officials on Nias.

Kalla said the government was sending more ships and helicopters from the mainland and would try to restore the water supply within a week.

Heavy rains on Thursday and early on Friday have hampered relief and rescue efforts, but increasing numbers of aid workers and supplies have begun to reach Nias.

An Australian navy ship carrying 60 medical personnel docked in Nias on Saturday morning to help treat hundreds of people injured in Monday’s quake.

“The issue is that because of lack of road infrastructure and the lack of ... helicopter support, we are not really sure what is happening in the outlying areas,” George McGuire, commander of HMAS Kanimbla, told reporters.