Indonesian Quake Toll up to 63+

Toll from Indonesian earthquake
climbs to 63 as hope fades for
dozens missing in landslide

Associated Press

Last update: September 4, 2009 - 8:58 AM

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesian rescue
workers pulled several bodies from the rubble of
a giant landslide Friday, lifting the death toll from
a powerful earthquake to 63. Dozens more
people were still missing, feared dead.

Hopes of finding possible survivors were fading,
two days after the quake, officials said.

The number of houses recorded as destroyed or
damaged in Wednesday's magnitude 7.0 temblor,
which was centered off the southern coast of the
main island of Java, jumped to more than 87,000,
Disaster Management Agency spokesman Priyadi
Kardono said.

Around 28,000 people were in need of shelter, he
said. Aid agencies were distributing tents,
blankets and basic provisions, but some rural
areas were difficult to reach.

Two dozen bodies have been recovered from
Cikangkareng village, in the badly hit district of
Cianjur, where 33 people were still missing after
10 houses and a mosque were buried under tons
of rock and mud.

"Their parents are still waiting at the scene,
hoping we will find the bodies," rescue worker
Agus Sobari said.

Other victims have been found under collapsed
houses and debris in towns and cities across
West Java province. More than 400 people were
injured and 125 people were hospitalized with
broken bones and cuts, the disaster agency said
on its Web site.

The search for survivors would last a week,
Kardono said, but the likelihood of finding anyone
alive was becoming increasingly slim.

"We cannot conclude they have died until
emergency response efforts are over," Kardono
said.

Residents in Cikangkareng have described how
after the quake struck Wednesday afternoon
there was a deafening roar as giant boulders
tumbled down the mountainside. Among the dead
and missing are at least 13 children who had been
playing video games.

Indonesia, a vast archipelago, straddles
continental plates and is prone to seismic activity
along what is known as the Pacific Ring of Fire. A
huge quake off western Indonesia caused a
powerful tsunami in December 2004 that killed
about 230,000 people in a dozen countries, half
of them in Aceh province.

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