Trickle Of Aid Reaches Quake Survivors

A trickle of aid began reaching survivors of the Indonesian earthquake that killed more than 5,400 over the weekend, but desperate villagers said the meager deliveries were not enough.

"We have 300 families in this village and have only gotten two sacks of rice," said Lastri, 27, begging beneath the blazing sun, a 5-month-old baby in her arms. "It's not enough."

More aid was on the way — a U.N. World Food Program was scheduled to arrive near the quake zone on Java island on Tuesday with high-energy biscuits and blankets, tents and generators, and U.N. trucks traveled roads lined with increasingly desperate children, women and elderly seeking handouts.

The United States, which pledged US$2.5 million (euro1.9 million) to the relief effort, said 100 military doctors and nurses also were on the way, carrying surgical, laboratory, dental, and X-ray equipment.

But cracks in the runway at the region's main airport caused by Saturday's 6.3-magnitude quake, and the poor condition of roads in the mountainous region were hampering aid delivery efforts.

The government's Social Affairs Ministry raised the official death toll to 5,427 on Tuesday.

The government said an estimated 200,000 people were homeless, most living in improvised shacks close to their former homes or in shelters erected in rice fields. Hospitals are overflowing with bloodied survivors.

In a worrying sign, a scientist studying nearby Mount Merapi, which has been belching gas and lava for weeks, said its volcanic activity had increased threefold since the quake.

Lava and hot clouds of gas were avalanching 3 kilometers (2 1/2 miles) down the volcano's slopes Monday, said volcanologist Subandriyo.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited refugees Monday and acknowledged a "lack of coordination" in aid distribution. He urged government officials to be "more agile."

A plane chartered by UNICEF, loaded with water, tents, stoves and cooking sets, arrived Monday in Solo, a city about three hours' drive from the hardest-hit district of Bantul.

But officials said relief supplies remained inadequate.

In Jamprip, a village of 300 families, 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."

Some 22 countries have contributed or pledged assistance to the Southeast Asian country, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in Geneva. An emergency appeal by the global body is expected later this week.

The area affected by the quake stretches across hundreds of square kilometers (square miles) of mostly farming communities to the south of Yogyakarta, large swathes still left without electricity.

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.