SMS offers hope, death stalks rescue effort<\/p>\n
Victor Tjahjadi, Agence France Presse\/Gunung Sitoli<\/p>\n
No heartbeats have registered on their high-tech listening gear
\nand the smell of death seeps ominously from the debris, but a
\ntelephone text message pleading for help from beneath the ruins
\nis enough to drive the rescuers on.<\/p>\n
As steady drizzle poured onto the earthquake-devastated island
\nof Nias, Capt. Cera Tan and her nine-strong team from Singapore's
\nCivil Defence Force pulled grimly at wet chunks of concrete,
\nhoping for a miracle.<\/p>\n
"We have been working for an hour trying to evacuate these
\npeople," Tan told AFP as she scrambled over the rubble and mud of
\na street smashed to pieces when Monday's 8.7-magnitude earthquake
\nhit the Indonesian island of Nias.<\/p>\n
"We can see the body of a person, but we cannot really be sure
\nwhether they are alive or not," she said wearily.<\/p>\n
Normally, Tan and her team would have moved on, hunting for
\nlocations where there is more hope of finding people still alive
\nand following rumours of people still talking from under the
\npiles of concrete.<\/p>\n
But as she rushed to Nias from Jakarta in the hours after the
\nquake, Rita Ghani, a relative of the family buried here, received
\na mobile phone text message saying her sister was still
\nconscious.<\/p>\n
"My sister last night sent an SMS to her friend here saying
\nthat she was still alive and asked to be rescued," Gani said. "I
\nam glad that there is still a slight hope that there is someone
\nstill alive."<\/p>\n
Captain Tan's team were brought to the crushed house, near the
\nNou main market in the Nias city of Gunung Sitoli, by Rita and
\nother relatives of the Ghanis who had been struggling with basic
\ntools to uncover the family.<\/p>\n
She said that five people -- Fransiskus, 52, his wife Susanti,
\n52, their children Melani, aged 14, and 12-year-old Alexander,
\nalong with their maid Lina, 20 -- were believed to be trapped.<\/p>\n
The team quickly unpacked sophisticated sonar equipment which
\ncan detect even weak heartbeats beneath the debris. Worryingly,
\nthey heard nothing.<\/p>\n
"Earlier on, we tried using a life detector but unfortunately
\nwe did not detect any movement," said Tan. The workers
\nnevertheless decided to press on with the rescue, she said.<\/p>\n
"We are using an airbag, mechanical equipment that can
\npartially lift the debris, to enable us to have more space to
\nwork," she said.<\/p>\n
As scores of people watched, a Range Rover pickup truck
\nequipped with a winch heaved away some of the larger chunks of
\ndebris to help the rescuers scramble into the space beneath.
\nBut as they got closer to finding out the Ghanis' fate, Rita's
\nfleeting optimism ebbed away.<\/p>\n
"I am already resigned to their death, and my tears have
\nalready been drained yesterday," she said.<\/p>",
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