Soldiers Dig for Boy in Indonesia Rubble

By ZAKKI HAKIM

BUKIT TINGGI, Indonesia – Rescuers dug through dirt, sand and rocks Thursday for an 8-year-old boy torn from his neighbor’s grasp in a landslide unleashed by a powerful earthquake, which killed up to 74 people in Indonesia.

Elsewhere, markets reopened in Sumatra island towns hit by the magnitude 6.3 quake and a strong aftershock about 660 miles west of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. Many people remained too traumatized to return home, while others complained of receiving no emergency aid.

The boy, Rahmat, was on his way home from fishing when the quake hit. His neighbor, Nur Aini, grabbed the 8-year-old and her own son and ran toward a nearby mountain at Sianok Canyon. But the cliff rained up to 10 feet of rock, sand and dirt on the three.

“I was buried chest-high, while both Rahmat and my son slipped free from my hands,” Nur Aini said. She managed to free herself and found her son alive, but Rahmat was missing.

Rahmat’s mother, Rina, watched rescue workers dig with spades and high-pressure water to loosen the soil because heavy machinery could not reach the landslide, which left dust clouds lingering in the air.

“The important thing is I can see him,” said Rina, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

The quake collapsed scores of homes, offices and government buildings.

Many people were still living outside their damaged homes, fearful they would fall down in another quake.

“I want to (go) back to my home as a soon as possible but I am still afraid,” said Januar, who was huddled under a blue tent. “We didn’t have anything to eat yesterday, and today we got rice from our relatives.”

Ahmad Arsnal, an official at the provincial emergency relief agency, said cities have received aid including rice, water and instant noodles, but assistance has been slow to reach victims in surrounding areas.

Agencies gave conflicting death tolls, as is common in disasters here.

A presidential spokesman said Wednesday that 52 people died, revising the toll down from 70 reported on the day of the quake. But on Thursday, West Sumatra vice governor Marlis Rahman said 74 people died. Another regional official put the toll as 72.

Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

The country was hardest hit by the Asian tsunami that killed 160,000 people on Sumatra’s northern tip in 2004.

Since then, two other deadly quakes have occurred, along with landslides, floods and volcanic eruptions. A quake in Java Island last year killed nearly 5,000 people.