Medics overwhelmed by casualties

Medics battled exhaustion and the risk of Covid-19 as they raced yesterday to treat scores of people injured by a devastating earthquake on Indonesia's Sulawesi island.

At least 84 were killed and thousands left homeless by the 6.2-magnitude quake that struck early Friday, reducing buildings to a tangled mass of twisted metal and chunks of concrete in the seaside city of Mamuju.

Doctors in hazard suits treated patients with broken limbs and other injuries at a makeshift medical centre set up outside the only one of the city's hospitals that survived relatively intact -- one was flattened by the violent tremor.

A handful of doctors and nurses worked "non-stop" in the first couple of days after the quake until reinforcements arrived, but it was still barely enough amid shortages of medicine and other supplies.

"We were completely overwhelmed at one point," said Indahwati Nursyamsi, director of West Sulawesi General Hospital.

"My nurses were also quake victims and had to help their families."

Medics scrambled to quarantine Covid-19 positive patients in a bid to prevent an outbreak at the crowded open-air triage centre.

Some with coronavirus have been put in a prayer room -- common in the Muslim majority nation -- at the back of the hospital.

The hospital was trying to open up more rooms for surgery and erect additional tents outside to treat the injured.

But fears that another quake could bring down the building added to the challenges as patients, and some staff, refused to stay inside.

"There are patients who were scared and pleaded to be taken out of the building," Nursyamsi said.

Nurse Agriani, 29, who came from a nearby district to help, said she had been working day and night.

"It's tiring... but it's part of my job as a nurse," said the woman, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

It was unclear how many people -- dead or alive -- could be buried under mountains of debris, as rescuers rushed to find survivors more than three days after the disaster.

Most of the 84 dead were found in Mamuju, but some bodies were also recovered south of the city of 110,000 people in West Sulawesi province.

At least 18 people had been pulled out of the rubble alive, including a pair of young sisters, according to official data.

Police began using sniffer dogs to help in the search at a badly damaged hospital, as body bags were filled with recovered corpses.

"There are probably some people still trapped under the rubble," search and rescue agency spokesman Yusuf Latif said earlier yesterday.