International Quake Aid Trickles In
The United States has again upped its contribution for assistance to victims of this weekend's devastating earthquake in Indonesia, allocating $5 million in emergency aid, the White House said Tuesday.
The Bush administration initially announced $500,000 in aid after the quake struck early Saturday, and by the end of the day had increased that amount to $2.5 million.
About 20 U.S. Marines arrived on U.S. military cargo planes in the historic city of Yogyakarta and unloaded heavy-lifting machinery and a portable field hospital, as Malaysian, Chinese and Japanese rescue workers joined Indonesian teams providing medical care and emergency supplies to victims.
Now days past the quake, CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen reports that it's no longer a race to find survivors, but a second race to help the homeless. Despite the incoming aid, there are still shortages of pretty much everything: food, medicine and doctors.
A disaster assistance response team from the U.S. Agency for International Development is being readied and the amphibious assault ship USS Essex, which has extensive medical facilities, is en route to the affected area, White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.
"We are continuing to assess further needs and are prepared to help our Indonesian friends in any way that we can," she said.
President Bush spoke by phone Saturday night with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
The magnitude-6.3 quake killed nearly 5,700 people, injured thousands more and left about 200,000 homeless. It was the latest in a series of problems in Indonesia, from the 2004 tsunami that ravaged Aceh province to a widening bird flu outbreak to the threat of eruption from nearby Mount Merapi.
Most of the survivors of Saturday's 6.3-magnitude quake were living in improvised shacks near the ruins of their homes or in shelters erected in rice fields. Officials say about 200,000 people lost their homes.
Conditions improved in two hospitals in the quake zone. They were initially overwhelmed with the injured, who overflowed into hallways and outdoor spaces.
Jan Egeland, the U.N.'s top humanitarian official, praised the aid effort as having made "enormous progress."
"It's going well in this respect so far in Java," Egeland told The Associated Press in Geneva. "The most critical need is medical assistance and after that, it's water and sanitation, and third is emergency shelter."
In a worrying sign, nearby Mount Merapi volcano, which has been belching gas and lava for weeks, shot out more large plumes of ash and debris. A scientist monitoring the peak blamed the heightened activity on the weekend temblor, though other experts said that may not be the case.
Petersen reports that the volcano's activity has increased threefold since the earthquake. Many of those living nearby were long since evacuated, and those who remain know they are taunting nature.
The quake leveled tens of thousands of poorly constructed homes into piles of bricks, tiles and wood in less than a minute, as many victims slept or were preparing breakfast.
The death toll from the government's Social Affairs Ministry on Tuesday stood at 5,698. Ministry officials say the numbers keep rising as they account for bodies buried quickly in mass graves after the quake.
The head of an emergency response team from Malaysia said it didn't expect to find any more survivors or bodies under the rubble.
"The collapsed homes were all so small that anyone who was trapped would have been extracted by their family members," said Supt. Abdul Aziz Ahmad. He said his team had only found one body Monday after searching in the worst-hit Bantul district.
Many survivors, who have endured several torrential rain storms and hours baking under the tropical sun, have complained of receiving little or no assistance.
In the village of Jamprip, Edi Sutrisno, 37, helped unload a small supply of aid from a military truck, two bags of rice, nine boxes of dried noodles and two boxes of bottled water.
"It's the first we've gotten since the quake," he said. "Of course it's not enough for all of us, not even for a day."
The quake was the fourth destructive temblor to hit Indonesia in the past 17 months, including the one that spawned the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that left at least 216,000 dead or missing.
Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin. It has 76 volcanos, the largest number in the world.