Rescue teams from around the world poured into the worst-hit area around the regional capital of Padang as chances of finding survivors grew slimmer.
Block after block of toppled hotels, hospitals, office buildings and schools had yet to be searched and dozens of unclaimed corpses were laid out in the scorching sun at Dr. M. Djamil General Hospital, Padang's biggest, which was damaged in the quake.Wednesday's 7.6 magnitude temblor devastated a stretch of more than 60 miles along the western coast of Sumatra island, prompting a massive international aid operation in a country where earthquakes have taken a huge human toll in recent years.
More than 20,000 houses and buildings were destroyed and 2,400 people hospitalised across seven districts, said Priyadi Kardono, a spokesman for the national disaster agency.
Fuel was being rationed amid a power outage, water and food were in short supply and villagers dug out the dead with their bare hands, witnesses and aid agencies said.
Contrasting that grim picture of grief and destruction, at least one survivor was pulled from the rubble on Friday. Virgo, a 19-year-old English student, was found alive under the rubble of her college in Padang, the Foreign Language School of Prayoga.
"Her dead friends were beneath and above her. Fortunately, she was able to withstand the stench for 40 hours," said Dubel Mereyenes, the doctor who treated her. "She has a severely injured leg, but we will try to avoid amputation."
Another survivor was a teacher at the same school, Suci Ravika Wulan Sari, who was extracted from the debris almost exactly 48 hours after the college crumbled in the 5.16 pm quake, killing dozens of students.
Elsewhere in the city, at the site of the former Ambacang Hotel where as many as 200 were feared trapped, rescue workers detected signs of life under a hill of tangled steel, concrete slabs and broken bricks of the five-story structure, said Gagah Prakosa, a spokesman of the rescue team.
As the scale of the destruction became clearer, Vice President Jusuf Kalla told reporters in the capital, Jakarta, that the recovery operation would cost at least $400 million (£250 million) because the "impact of this disaster has worsened."
Military and commercial planes shuttled in tons of emergency supplies, although rural areas remained cut off from help due to landslides that reportedly crushed several villages and killed nearly 300 people.
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