Story type: Story

Behind hills and lines of trees, perching on the edge of a cliff in the highlands 45 kilometers from the city of Pariaman, the village of Korong Barang-barangan is effectively hidden from the world. The village is not connected to the power or water grids. So when the earthquake struck in the afternoon of September 30, causing massive damage to the infrastructure and houses, the community silently survived in their own modest way, without any help from anybody.

It was Wednesday afternoon in the village of Tanjung Alai. Sariani had just finished her prayers and was sitting in the living room watching TV with her five-year-old grandchild, Farisa. It was a regular evening; everything was just fine until the ground started to shake.

Zaimarti is sitting on the corner of a wooden bench in front of what used to be her home, finishing her lunch – instant noodles with some rice. It’s the same menu she’s had for the past five days, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

In the early afternoon of 29 September, the eye of Typhoon Ketsana ripped through the central province of Quang Nam, buffeting communities with gusts of over 150 kilometres an hour. The road from the coastal city of Danang is littered with remnants of the storm; gashes in the asphalt where the road has given way, and billboards cut through as if by giant claws.

Straw hanging from twisted powerlines resembles washing hung out to dry. Rows of telegraph poles lie skittled, while buffaloes wallow in churned heaps of mud beside the road. They are vivid scenes redolent of the destruction wrought by Typhoon Ketsana.

On September 30, Indra, a 20-year-old student in Padang, West Sumatra, gets a desperate phone call from his mother. The island has just been struck with a massive earthquake. Indra leaves Padang and rushes back to his home in the remote village of Pulo Air. Fortunately, he arrives to find his mother safe.

It started to rain a few hours ago, and it’s dark. Today we were supporting the government order to evacuate people from high-risk areas as a precautionary measure.

As we waited for Typhoon Ketsana to hit, our first priority was the safety of our staff. Any at risk were immediately called back and commonsense things like closing windows and doors, making sure we had enough drinking water and ensuring that our staff prepared their own houses were done so we were ready to concentrate on people’s needs as soon as the storm passed.

At 9:00 pm local time, on Thursday, October 1, CARE worker Bahtra Tarigan arrived at the airport in Padang on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia with the rest of the CARE emergency response team. There is no power and no functional communications. By texting on his cell phone, Bahtra has been able to send short updates to the outside world about what he is seeing in the earthquake-devastated city. Information in italics was added for clarity; all other text is verbatim from Bahtra’s text messages.