Earthquake flattened towns, report says

Press, 16 September 1976, Page 2

Earthquake flattened towns, report says

A detailed report on the immediate aftermath of an earthquake which struck Bali in July, killing hundreds of people, has been received from a New Zealander in charge of a medical clinic there. Mr D. S. Sutherland is field director of a Project Concern clinic at Mengwi, south-east of the worst-hit area.

Staff of the clinic — which is jointly run by Australian and New Zealand branches of the international aid organisation — went <.o some of the stricken towns and villages, distributing food and supplies. Many villages were destroyed, and more than 100,000 houses were badly damaged by the shocks, which measured 5.6 on the Richter scale.

About 570 people are known to have died, and about 3500 were injured.

Mr Sutherland described' how houses stood at crazy ( i angles, or had collapsed into l : heaps of rubble. A friend of(i (the clinic’s staff was buried i (under a falling wall, al- i though a tree saved him ’ (from the full weight of the (masonry. | Seririt, a market town of 145,000 people, was flattened, : and its population was forced to sleep in the surirounding rice-fields. I In another village where! (there was not a building l (standing, the road was (blocked by rubble. A crowd* (of desperate people sur-( (rounded the clinic’s car and( (began to rip away the sup-, l ' 'plies. Il

“Hotly pursued by angry villagers,” they managed to escape. But most people were still in shock, and were “just standing around in a dazed way, not making any effort to help themselves. “A terrible smell hangs in the air — we are afraid to ask what it could be.” Most permanent dwellings in Bali are built with bricks made of lime and sand, with virtually no mortar. These were vulnerable, while the many simple bamboo and wooden structures with grasfe roofs suffered very little damage. The death toll would have been higher if a small earth tremor had not occurred soon before. This warned the people to get into the open. A tragic exception was a school in Seririt, where children moved back indoors when nothing more happened. Soon afterwards the building fell in on them. Damage at the medical clinic was confined to cracked walls.

| It was built by Project: Concern two and a half 1 [years ago, and will even-! tually be handed over to the: (islanders, A staff of 22 —( (including three Australians!

and a New Zealander — provide medical attention for about 3700 patients each month, and teach family planning, health, and hygiene.