Anne Barrowclough in Jakarta
Sumatrans ran screaming into the street today as a second powerful earthquake hit the Indonesian island just 12 hours after a devastating tremor struck the southern city of Padang where thousands are feared dead.
Rescuers raced to the flattened city this morning where over 400 people are believed to have died and tens of thousands remain trapped in rubble.
The earthquake was so powerful it was felt hundreds of miles away in Malaysia and Singapore, causing buildings there to sway. The second quake hit about 150 miles south of Padang, at a depth of just under 20 miles.
As dawn broke in Padang, a coastal city of 900,000 on Sumatra island, people who had chosen to sleep in makeshift shelters in the open gathered weeping outside demolished buildings.
Furniture was strewn through the streets and a man's foot could be seen sticking from the rubble of one house, his body trapped and invisible under tons of concrete.
Women and children sat helplessly on the ground outside their demolished homes, wailing in uncontrollable grief.
The work of rescuers has been made doubly difficult with electricity and communications remaining cut off and landslips caused by pouring rain blocking roads into the city.
"The number of people who died in West Sumatra is 464 and they are from six districts," said Tugyo Bisri, a social affairs ministry official. Other officials have estimated that the toll would reach in the "thousands".
At least 500 buildings in Padang had collapsed or were badly damaged, including hospitals, mosques, a shopping centre and a school. The extent of damage in surrounding areas was still unclear.
An Indonesian television station showed footage of heavy equipment breaking through layers of cement in search of more than 30 children it said were missing and feared dead at one school.
"I was studying math with my friends when suddenly a powerful earthquake destroyed everything around me," an unidentified boy told Indonesia's TVOne. He escaped out of the top floor just as the three-story structure, used for after-school classes, crumpled.
Rustam Pakaya, the head of the Health Ministry crisis centre, said a major city hospital was also among the many buildings that had buckled in the quake.
Indonesia's Vice President Jusuf Kalla said: "People are trapped, hotels have collapsed, schools have collapsed, houses have collapsed and electricity has been cut off."
Government ministers are on their way to Padang, with aid including tents, generators, food and water.
Indonesia, a poor, sprawling nation with limited resources, was cobbling together an emergency aid response, and the government was preparing for the possibility of thousands of deaths.
Padang's mayor appealed for assistance on Indonesian radio.
"We are overwhelmed with victims and ... lack of clean water, electricity and telecommunications," Padang Mayor Fauzi Bahar said. "We really need help. We call on people to come to Padang to evacuate bodies and help the injured."
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