Aid is finally reach­ing remote vil­lages in Indonea­sia after the Sep­tem­ber 30th earth­quake. The earth­quake caused mud­slides that swept away entire vil­lages. Many remote areas were cut­off to assis­tance as many roads were swept away.

From this Asso­ci­ated Press arti­cle that we found at Toronto’s 680 News, writer Eric Tal­madge says that many sur­vivors are see­ing aid work­ers for the first time in their lives.

House after house in the vil­lage of Lubuk Laweh lay top­pled, their own­ers scroung­ing through them for tarps and other belong­ings. Chil­dren ran into the street cry­ing “please, help me” as a truck con­voy of food and water sup­plies rat­tled in.

Large parts of the provin­cial cap­i­tal of Padang and nearby vil­lages were destroyed in the Sept. 30 quake. The offi­cial death toll was 704 but could reach into the thou­sands. About 180,000 build­ings — half of them homes — were severely dam­aged or flat­tened, Indonesia’s Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Agency said.
…

Aid work­ers handed out bot­tled water and pack­ets of instant noo­dles in the vil­lage in the first major aid deliv­ery to reach it. The road to the vil­lage had been blocked by debris.

Aid work­ers from at least 20 coun­tries are descend­ing on West Suma­tra, includ­ing the largest con­tin­gent of U.S. mil­i­tary since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed around 130,000 peo­ple in nearby Aceh province.

Like most of Indone­sia, West Suma­tra province had no func­tion­ing health sys­tem even before the quake and an influx of inter­na­tional aid has prompted all sorts of peo­ple to seek help.

“We have treated nearly 400 peo­ple in the past four days,” said Yoshi Kazu Yamada, the deputy of a Japan­ese med­ical team in Padang Paria­man dis­trict, where about 100 peo­ple were lin­ing up out­side tents wait­ing for treatment.

“At first it was flesh wounds, but now it is more peo­ple seek­ing help for chronic con­di­tions like dia­betes,” he said. “These prob­lems were not caused by the quake, but they need care.”

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