Stephen Fitzpatrick, Padang (Indonesia) – The earthquake devastated west Sumatran city of Padang is slowly trying to drag itself to normalcy today with school students back in those classrooms that are still standing and public servants returning to offices, where they can.
The rainy season has arrived in full force, with two savage thunderstorms in as many days hampering the cleanup effort, especially Pariaman district north of Padang, where landslides have claimed hundreds of lives.
Many of these landslide victims died after the quake hit last Wednesday will now never be recovered and the area is coming to be regarded as a mass grave.
In Padang, Indonesian and international search and rescue teams have largely abandoned any hope of recovering survivors and a crew from the Queensland fire and rescue service is expected to return home as soon as Wednesday,.
At the worst hit single structure in Padang, the Ambachang Hotel, one of the grandest buildings in a city full of grand Dutch and Chinese architecture, there are likely still dozens of bodies that may also never be recovered.
Teams this morning found one such body in the Ambachang Hotel and recovery work halted as they tried to extract it from the rubble.
The Indonesian government is keen to have life return to normal as soon as possible, which will include demolishing buildings such as the Ambachang, which stand as a reminder of last weeks devastation.
The elegantly coiffed women's empowerment minister, Meutia Hatta, was taken on a tour of the district yesterday, including the former site of a primary school newly repaired after the 2007 earthquake in the same area that killed dozens.
She was told there had been no children in the school when it disappeared in the landslide. But directly below it are thought to be about eight houses, all now invisible under tonnes of mud. More than 40 people were in them, villagers believe.
Farmer Syahrial, 20, told how he held on to a door frame as the quake hit, only to be swept hundreds of metres down the mountain into the river below as the mud crushed his house.
"Now I'm thinking about what I can do next," the young man said, sitting in the shade of a corrugated iron lean-to and nursing a bandaged leg. "My family is gone, my house is gone, my land is gone, my animals are gone. What now?"
Mr Syahrial's parents and a 2 1/2-year-old nephew died in the landslide, but another three siblings survived, also washed down into the river. He thinks it is only because his family's house was higher than all the others in the village that they lived where dozens of others didn't.
Another man who survived the landslide but most of whose family died told how there were four houses slumped containing four of his siblings and their various children. "It's only that I married and now live in the next village that I was saved," he said.
Outside Padang, the scale of the disaster is only now being discovered. Desperate villagers complained to reporters they were being neglected while the focus remained on the city.
"Today the military will be heading to landslide areas which we have not been able to access earlier because roads are closed and broken," Indonesian military spokesman Sagom Tamboen said.
The mayor of Padang, Fauzi Bahar, said that only 60 per cent of the disaster zone had been accessed by emergency teams, and that more heavy machinery and materials to rebuild houses were urgently needed.
Anger about poor construction and lax enforcement of building regulations is beginning to surface as people recover from the shock of the disaster. "The government must introduce new standards when rebuilding the city," said Irwadi, a fisheries ministry official.
Another 5.5-magnitude quake rocked Indonesia yesterday, in West Papua province which is in the far east of the sprawling archipelago about 3500km from the Sumatra quake disaster zone. Authorities said there were no reports of injuries there. (Additional reporting: AFP)