Marines bring supplies for quake victims

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By CHRIS BRUMMITT
Associated Press Writer

BANTUL, Indonesia (AP) -- Two U.S. military cargo planes landed Tuesday at the site of an earthquake in Indonesia that killed more than 5,400, bringing some of the first significant aid to reach the tens of thousands of survivors who were left homeless.

About 20 U.S. Marines arrived on the cargo planes in the historic city of Yogyakarta and unloaded heavy lifting machinery and a portable field hospital, as Malaysian, Chinese and Japanese rescue workers joined Indonesian teams providing medical care and emergency supplies to victims.

Most of the survivors of Saturday's 6.3-magnitude quake were living in improvised shacks near the ruins of their homes or in shelters erected in rice fields. Officials say about 200,000 people lost their homes.

However, conditions had improved in two hospitals in the quake zone, with no patients being treated outside or in the corridors Tuesday like there were until recently.

In a worrying sign, nearby Mount Merapi volcano, which has been belching gas and lava for weeks, shot out more large plumes of ash and debris. A scientist monitoring the peak blamed the heightened activity on the weekend temblor, though other experts said that may not be the case.

The quake leveled tens of thousands of poorly constructed homes into piles of bricks, tiles and wood in less than a minute, as many victims slept or were preparing breakfast.

The head of an emergency response team from Malaysia said it didn't expect to find any more survivors or bodies under the rubble.

"The collapsed homes were all so small that anyone who was trapped would have been extracted by their family members," said Supt. Abdul Aziz Ahmad. He said his team had only found one body Monday after searching in the worst-hit Bantul district.

Many survivors - who have endured several torrential rain storms and hours baking under the tropical sun - have complained of receiving little or no assistance.

In the village of Jamprip, 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."

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono arrived in the area a few hours after the quake struck. On Monday, he acknowledged a "lack of coordination" in aid distribution.

Yudhoyono's efforts will likely come under intense domestic scrutiny because unlike other disasters in recent years in outlying regions, the quake occurred on Java island, home to almost half of the country's 220 million people, including the bulk of the ruling class.

"I don't want this to become a political issue," he said late Monday when asked about rival lawmakers' growing criticism of his response.

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

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.

Four destructive earthquakes have visited 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.