E-Mail from Indonesia:

“It has been raining non-stop for the past six hours. Heavy, heavy rain. People are sleeping outside, living outside. We are all wet. They have no shelter. Some people are sleeping under broken pieces of roof. Everyone is suffering. People say to me, “Don’t count the number of destroyed houses. Count the number of houses still standing. It will be faster.” In most villages I have seen, only 15 percent of houses are still standing. Some houses are totally flattened. The roof is flat on the ground. There have been aftershocks in the past few days but today was mostly quiet. But everyone is afraid, so they will not go inside their houses. They are afraid of another earthquake. Shelter is the main issue. People also need mosquito nets. They are sleeping outside, and with all this rain, there will be mosquitoes and malaria. Children are already starting to get sick. Especially if the rain continues like this. People need blankets, mosquito nets, plastic sheeting. There are many injured people and people still buried under buildings. It is very hard to reach the affected areas. Landslides have blocked roads and there is debris everywhere. Our team went out by motorbike today. We have 20 people on the emergency team, including staff from our local partner. This damage looks worse than the Yogyakarta quake in 2006. People are traumatized. They are asking for help. It’s five days now. It’s not clear how many people are affected yet. We don’t have all the information from the rural areas. There are many dead bodies. The smell is coming. People are drinking coconut juice, or river water. People in these village used to get their water from springs, but the pipes are broken. In Padang city, the municipal water is not running yet.  The water from the river is not clean, and people don’t have stoves to boil water. They need clean drinking water or there is going to be a rise in water-borne illness. We have supplies to help 5,000 people to start, but we need funds to help more. People lost everything. Their house is destroyed, everything in it is destroyed.”