Elisia Yeo, Bantul – The United Nations says it is in a race against time to help survivors still struggling to get food, shelter and urgent medical care one week after the Indonesian earthquake.
Tens of thousands of homeless spent their seventh night out in the open, huddled under makeshift tents of plastic sheeting or tarpaulins, while others went into their second week awaiting treatment at overwhelmed hospitals.
UN officials said bottlenecks in getting aid to the needy had been mostly resolved but after days of watching the death toll rise by hundreds, they said the relief effort would be speeded up to prevent further loss of life.
"We are redoubling efforts on all fronts, trying to race against time, knowing the population could quickly go down to the level of hardship," Puji Pujiono, the UN's deputy area humanitarian coordinator, told AFP.
"We are continuing to do what we can," he said. The United Nations said 100 million dollars was needed over the next six months to cope with the scale of the devastation.
One week on, those whose homes were not flattened were picking through the rubble, looking for whatever could be salvaged and fearing that disaster could strike again.
"I still feel traumatized because one week later, we're still having tremors," said Warno, a 39-year-old schoolteacher, as neighbors repaired the tiles ripped off his roof in the village of Warung Boto.
"We all feel unsafe about sleeping inside," he said. "We need money to rebuild our house." While two of his children are healthy, his six-year-old daughter is still vomiting and suffering from diarrhea, likely due to shock. Warno's 84-year-old father died on Friday.
At least 6,234 people were killed, some 46,000 others injured and more than 139,000 homes in Central Java and Yogyakarta provinces either damaged or completely destroyed.
"The height of the emergency phase will continue, I would expect, for another week to two weeks, and at the most be completed in a month," said the UN's Charlie Higgins, who is overseeing the relief effort in Java.
Indonesia has deployed around 3,000 troops to help with the relief efforts, Major General Sunarso, deputy operations coordinator for the national disaster management board, told reporters.
Foreign medical teams have set up field hospitals to ease the burden on local facilities, but new casualties have continued to stream in.
"A lot of new patients with quake-related injuries came here," said Sunarto from Bantul hospital. He had no immediate data available but said dozens had been admitted, most of them suffering broken bones.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said it was trying to provide temporary shelter in rooming houses and small hotels to the injured who had nowhere else to go when they were discharged from hospital.
"Many patients have no homes to return to or are not prepared yet to go back to their villages," said the IOM's Nenette Motus.
The World Health Organization (WHO), which has warned of an increased risk of the spread of infectious diseases, on Saturday launched a surveillance system to detect any outbreaks.
Indonesian officials and aid agencies said looting had become a problem, with desperate survivors stopping trucks carrying food aid. "It's already being monitored by police," said Budi Atmadji, deputy head of the national disaster management board.
Authorities in Jakarta dispatched assessment teams to determine the exact number of dead and injured. New figures would be available on Sunday at the earliest, said a social affairs ministry official.