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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 10, 2018)
NATION/WORLD Friday, August 10, 2018 East Oregonian Destructive Indonesian quake leaves injured waiting for help By TODD PITMAN and NINIEK KARMINI Associated Press KAYANGAN, Indo- nesia — Falling rubble instantly paralyzed Mary Andoni from the waist down when Indonesia was shaken by one of its dead- liest earthquakes in years. But there was nobody in her destroyed village to get her the help she needed. There were too many other injured and dead. “It was overwhelm- ing,” Andoni’s 35-year-old brother-in-law, Ilham, said of the chaotic aftermath of Sunday’s magnitude 7.0 earthquake on the island of Lombok. “There was no way to get her out.” On Thursday, para- medics finally evacuated Andoni to a hospital in the city of Mataram. But her experience underscores the challenges facing this dev- astated region: Four days after the earthquake killed hundreds of people and displaced 270,000 more, injured survivors in remote areas cut off by landslides and broken bridges are still emerging from the ruined countryside, struggling to reach the doctors they des- perately need. And the crisis hasn’t ended. Lombok has been hit by over 300 aftershocks, including a 5.9 magni- tude tremor on Thursday that brought down more buildings and injured 24 more people, authorities said. In northern Lombok, some people leaped from their vehicles on a traf- fic-jammed road when the aftershock hit, while an elderly woman standing in the back of a pickup truck wailed “God is Great.” At a Mataram hospital, about a dozen people were being treated while fearful staff moved patients outside. At a first aid station in Kayangan that was set up under a sprawling tent because of the threat of more quakes, Dr. Moham- mad Akbar said medi- cal staff were combing the region with an ambulance to locate injured people. By 3 p.m., he said, they had found and treated 40 people with broken bones, cuts and bruises. Many were also dehydrated. “They’re all stuck in isolated areas with little or no transport,” Akbar said. “They’re too weak to get here on their own, so we need to go to them.” Akbar said paramed- ics were treating infec- tions caused by traumatic wounds, and they were reaching some victims too late. One 3-year-old girl, he said, had been found with a wounded foot that had turned pale blue after being untended for three days. Doctors at another hospital on Lombok had to ampu- tate it. Because the nearest hos- pital — an hour’s drive away in Tanjung — was wrecked by the quake, Akbar’s aid station is refer- ring patients to an Indone- sian naval ship now docked at an empty port on the coast. Navy Col. Andi Abdul- lah, an orthopedic surgeon stationed on the huge gray vessel, said military doctors had received 46 survivors so far, and performed sur- gery on 16. Two of the ship’s wards were filled by patients lying on stretchers with IV drips in their arms. Outside, in the hallways, family mem- bers who accompanied them sat barefoot on mats, staring blankly at the ship’s walls. “Their physical wounds are easy to treat. But their AP Photo/Fauzy Chaniago An Indonesian girl who was injured in Sunday’s earthquake reacts as she is being examined by a paramedic at a makeshift hospital in Kayangan, North Lombok, Indonesia on Thursday. AP Photo/Fauzy Chaniago A boy who was injured in Sunday’s earthquake sits on a folding bed at a makeshift hospital in Kayangan. North Lombok, Indonesia. psychological wounds are much harder to heal, espe- cially for those who lost loved ones,” Abdallah said. “When we ask ‘what happened to you?’ most of them break down. ... They find it very hard to describe what they went through. They have no words.” Abdallah said several of the patients had waited to seek medical help because they had run high into the hills fearing the quake would spawn a tsunami, and stayed there for days. One of them, a 45-year- old woman named Supisah, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, said her leg had been shattered by a collapsing wall. After a villager helped carry her to higher ground, she did not make it back down until Wednesday. In Kopang Daya, injured villagers also got their first proper treatment Thursday after medics arrived with a portable X-ray machine and other supplies. They tended to an elderly woman with an injured face and hips who had been knocked over by her grandson as they scram- bled from their house. Kayangan appears to be one of Lombok’s hard- est-hit areas. Associated Press journalists who vis- ited Thursday saw kilome- ter after kilometer (mile after mile) of homes by the road that were completely flattened. One family had put down mats and mat- tresses on a cleared rect- angle to sleep on; tower- ing around them were piles of broken wood and shards of concrete, the crushed remains of their home. Akbar’s aid station is the only one in the vicinity, and it’s more than half an hour drive away. Page 7A WHEAT: Losses are among major exporters Continued from 1A Hard red winter wheat ranged from $6.28 to $7.23 per bushel, up from $6.07 to $6.30 a month ago. Dark northern spring wheat sold for $6.85 to $7.59 per bushel, up from $6.66-$6.83 a month ago at Portland. Mike Krueger, with MK Consulting in Salem, pointed to signs that poor growing weather in Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakh- stan and other some other export countries has been causing the crop to “shrivel” in recent months. Russia’s production is forecast to be down as much as 21 per- cent compared to last year’s record crop, and excess rain in the Black Sea region has damaged some of that wheat crop. The losses are concen- trated among major wheat exporters, Krueger said. The USDA will put out its latest wheat report Aug. 10. Black Sea wheat prices have been going up, to about $234 per metric ton, or $6.37 per bushel, Krueger said. “They’re still cheaper than us to Egypt, but not nearly as much as they were,” he said. To make his projections, Krueger has been taking esti- mates made by Russia and other countries and reducing their exports to record-low carryovers, then comparing them to USDA projections to make his predictions. “A very large quantity would have to be filled by the world’s residual sup- plier, which is us,” he said. Wheat crops in the U.S., Canada and Austra- lia are also smaller than anticipated. 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