Sign InRegister

Hospitals overflow amid fear, death

Earthquake wounded are treated in the hallway of a hospital in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Saturday.

WATCH

Browse/Search

The death toll is rising after a quake in Indonesia (2:12)

Hundreds swamp hospitals for treatment (:40)

Yogyakarta runway cracks, canceling flights (1:55)

Gallery: People, buildings devastated

• Map: Where the quake hit

• Send your photos and e-mails

YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS

YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Hundreds of injured men, women and children packed the grounds of Sardjito Hospital in this historic city Saturday, stretched out on pieces of bloody cardboard, as cries of agony pierced the evening air.

Several relatives read the Quran to victims as they anxiously awaited treatment.

But the staff was stretched to its limits by a powerful earthquake that killed at least 3,000 people and injured thousands when it struck central Java island. (Full story)

"We are running out of surgeons, we need help," said Dr. Alexander, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. (Watch hospitals struggle to cope with a mass influx of patients -- 0:40)

He said many patients could die of internal bleeding and other injuries if they did not receive treatment quickly.

Heru Nugroho, an official at the hospital, said: "We are in a panic to accommodate hundreds of injured people, and our emergency care is overwhelmed. We are using the parking area to provide medical treatment ... and dead bodies lie in the hospital's corridors."

Damage could be seen across Yogyakarta, a central Indonesian city of 1 million people that is home to ancient temples and other historic landmarks.

Many people refused to re-enter their houses, fearing aftershocks. Exhausted and distraught, they slept outdoors in front yards and fields.

The quake was the worst natural disaster to hit the country since the December 2004 tsunami, which killed more than 130,000 Indonesians and devastated much of Aceh province at the western end of the country. Comparisons to that tragedy were perhaps inevitable.

"This was the first time in my life I felt such a strong quake. We just fear that what happened in Aceh will happen again here," said Kinarsih, a 26-year-old housewife.

On a 9-mile drive south from Yogyakarta to Bantul, the hardest-hit district on densely populated Java, pavement and bridges were cracked and crumbling and the ruins of houses lined the roads.

About 80 percent of Bantul was flattened by the quake, authorities said, and the district itself accounts for 70 percent of the casualties.

Mass graves dug by villagers lay waiting as families cried over the bodies of loved ones.

Subarjo, a 70-year-old food vendor, sat beside his dead wife near the ruins of their house in the village of Mulyodadi.

He was unable to help her, he said, as he rushed to save his children from the tremor that jolted his family from their slumber and sent the walls crashing down around them.

"I accept this as our destiny," he said tearfully. "This is God's will."

Taxis and pickup vehicles raced the injured from remote areas to hospitals.

At Bantul's Bethesda hospital, the parking lot turned into a makeshift ward where hundreds of victims were laid on plastic sheets, palm-leaf mats and newspapers.

"I was hit by collapsed concrete as I was running out from my house," said one man, Sugiman, a 50-year-old resident of southern Bantul.

He was getting intravenous fluid from a bottle attached to a tree.