Reporters: Liz Hayes, Liam Bartlett, Karl Stefanovic
Producers: Howard Sacre, Shaun Devitt, Jonathan Harley, Glenda Gaitz
It was 48 hours that shook the world. When catastrophe came to paradise.
60 Minutes presents special coverage of this week’s earthquake disasters.
First Samoa and then Indonesia were struck by killer quakes. Thousands are feared dead.
In Samoa it was a giant tsunami that wrought the devastation. A wall of water that swept all before it.
The very next day a massive quake brought havoc to Padang City in Indonesia.
The 60 Minutes team takes you to the very epicentre of both disasters: scenes of amazing survival and heart-wrenching loss.
Story contacts:
Jane Liddon in Padang helps to run a little charity called Island Aid. You can find out more and donate here:
www.island-aid.org
Email:
info@island-aid.org
Full transcript below:
STORY: LIAM BARTLETT
RESCUE WORKER 1: Can you just go underneath that?
RESCUE WORKER 2: Underneath that?
RESCUE WORKER 1: No - go up, up, up. Around like that a little - more there. What's down there?
LIAM BARTLETT: Making the most of the last minutes of daylight, this Aussie search and rescue team has hit the ground running on its first day in Indonesia.
RESCUE WORKER 3: There's two pieces of timber, one there and one below it.
LIAM BARTLETT: And the chances of survival?
JOHN ROBERTS: The chances of survival are good for the next three days. It's certainly worth our effort to persevere.
LIAM BARTLETT: Queenslander John Roberts says every minute is precious in the urgent mission to find survivors.
JOHN ROBERTS: I'll just get the thermal imaging camera just so we can check that.
LIAM BARTLETT: So, John, are you looking for sound?
JOHN ROBERTS: Yes.
LIAM BARTLETT: And also for heat?
JOHN ROBERTS: And if we can find one person, then we'll be delighted.
LIAM BARTLETT: And then, if there's someone in there, you've got to work out how to get them out.
JOHN ROBERTS: Yeah, that's the next challenge - first pinpoint them, secondly access them.
LIAM BARTLETT: It's hard to imagine that all this destruction occurred in little more than 60 seconds. And you can see why so many people had so little time to save themselves.
RITA: Strike! Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I just think that house will fall down, and make me - like this.
LIAM BARTLETT: That must have been very frightening?
RITA: Yeah, very scared. Everybody screamed.
LIAM BARTLETT: When the quake struck in peak hour, just after 5pm Wednesday afternoon, Padang's city streets and buildings were teeming with its 1 million people. Thousands were out shopping for food when the main market building collapsed.
LIAM BARTLETT: That used to be the markets?
JANE LIDDON: The main market used to be like that, two storeys. Well, the top was packed. And the bottom was packed. And when it shook, it just came down - and look at it now.
LIAM BARTLETT: Jane Liddon works for Island Aid.
JANE LIDDON: So they know they're already dead?
WOMAN: Yeah.
LIAM BARTLETT: She's lived here for 15 years, through numerous quakes, tremors and a tsunami, but never this bad.
JANE LIDDON: The earthquakes you have here generally are nothing as strong as this one. This one was so strong in comparison, that they just don't expect this to happen. No-one - I've spoken to so many people - and they just said, "I never thought this would happen."
LIAM BARTLETT: The best guess is that hundreds died in the market alone. But many who survived the initial collapse died in the ensuing fire. The death toll began in the hundreds and quickly climbed. Padang's hospital is like a war zone. A make-shift morgue marks the main entrance. Rows and rows of people lie seriously injured. Nellie is six?
NURSE: Yes.
LIAM BARTLETT: This little girl and her baby sister were rushed out of the house by their mother.
NURSE: And they were actually outside of the house, in front of the house, when one of the walls fell out and fell...
LIAM BARTLETT: Fell on them?
NURSE: On her and the baby sister. And the baby sister, dead.
LIAM BARTLETT: The amateur video makes it clear how a quake this big can cause such instant terror through its sheer force. People clung to trees, light poles and each other, not knowing what to do, or where to run. And all this in a town where earthquakes are nothing new.
PROFESSOR KERRY SIEH: No city on Earth has had more wake-up calls than Padang. It had a wake-up call in 2004, which it learned from. It learned to run from a tsunami when they had an earthquake. They had a wake-up call again in 2005 with an 8.7 TO the north. 2007 - another two earthquakes in the matter of 12 hours. And then, now this one.
LIAM BARTLETT: Professor Kerry Sieh, an earthquake geologist working with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, predicted the quake that caused the Boxing Day tsunami in the same region five years ago, and he says this latest quake is only a precursor to the major disaster to come - a quake that could send a giant tsunami to Australia's northern shores.
PROFESSOR KERRY SIEH: If Java could have a big, magnitude 9 - which is still way up in the air and nobody knows the answer to that question - if you get a magnitude 9, you get a very big tsunami hitting the north-western Australian coast. That's a big unknown right now, for Australians.
LIAM BARTLETT: It was only a day after a larger earthquake and tsunami struck off the coast of Samoa. That quake erupted on the notorious 'Ring of Fire', a chain of unstable geological fault lines circling the Pacific, where the Earth's slowly moving tectonic plates collide violently. Australia's plate is steadily heading north and crunching into Indonesia. The resulting pressure can be earth-shattering.
JANE LIDDON: The people crying out were saying, 'Bantu' - "Help! Help! Help!" Just people in the street were trying to help them, and they were trapped beneath things up there.
LIAM BARTLETT: The carnage was indiscriminate. Some buildings left intact and others destroyed. The big Ambacang Hotel was one of the best in town. Air hostesses and insurance agents were in two separate seminars, and dozens perished.
JANE LIDDON: They got some people out, in the morning.
LIAM BARTLETT: The rescue here brought out the best and the worst in human nature. Survivors being pulled out at one end, while looters were busy at the other.
JANE LIDDON: What are all these people doing? MAN: We are taking all the TVs out, because the militaries have been taking them away.
LIAM BARTLETT: Incredibly, those sent to help appeared to be souveniring TV sets and computers. Around the corner, they're drilling into a room where four people are said to be trapped. Surrounding all of the sites are hundreds of shocked onlookers and panicked loved ones. So, Jane, it's less than 48 hours after the quake. That looks more like a demolition job than a rescue job.
JANE LIDDON: I agree with you.
LIAM BARTLETT: If you were relatives of any of the people trapped...
JANE LIDDON: You wouldn't want to be watching.
LIAM BARTLETT: You'd be beside yourself, wouldn't you?
JANE LIDDON: It's very sad.
LIAM BARTLETT: And everywhere, the scene was the same - heavy-handed mechanical force. With the best of intentions, but terrifying if you're trapped beneath. There are at least 70 primary school-aged children still trapped under that rubble. As you can see, the diggers' leaving. They've had enough, they can't find any more, so they've given up. They have sealed the fate of the kids, and what happens next - well, who knows?
JOHN ROBERTS: Can you go up at all? I just want to see what's...
LIAM BARTLETT: The best hope now, for anyone still trapped, is with the hi-tech equipment and expertise of the Australian Rescue Taskforce.
JOHN ROBERTS: What happens is, the building gets shook from side to side, and the whole thing comes down like a stack of pancakes.
LIAM BARTLETT: The Aussies have just three days to inspect 29 buildings where survivors are thought to be trapped inside. And, perhaps, we can use the experience. The best science says a huge Indonesian quake could devastate us if the big one finally arrives.
PROFESSOR KERRY SIEH: This earthquake that's just happened is relatively small, even though it did a lot of damage and killed people here. The next one, we think, will be about an 8.8 - the big one, the culminating earthquake, will be about an 8.8.
LIAM BARTLETT: And the clock is still ticking for that countdown?
PROFESSOR KERRY SIEH: Right. And nobody quite knows whether it's going to be a 30-second clock or a 30-year clock.
The Indonesian earthquake came just a day after Samoa suffered its tragedy. The tiny Pacific island was hit by a tsunami in the aftermath of an even more powerful quake. For one Australian family, the disaster has meant great heartache and uncertainty. Over the past few years, they've been sponsoring schoolchildren in a tiny village on Samoa's south coast, which bore the brunt of the killer wave. Karl Stefanovic joins them as they return to search for survivors.
KARL STEFANOVIC: For Wendy O'Neill and her family, this journey to Samoa was about hope.
WENDY O'NEILL: Where are all the people?
KARL STEFANOVIC: Hope that the place and the people they love are still here. This is a hard journey for you, isn't it?
WENDY O'NEILL: It's very hard. It's so sad. It's think it's going to get worse, isn't it?
KARL STEFANOVIC: When you knew you were coming back, what were your first thoughts?
WENDY O'NEILL: That it was going to be very confronting. I just wanted to know that the people we know are safe.
KARL STEFANOVIC: A strong woman who has battled and won against breast cancer and a brain tumour, she herself is a survivor. But as Wendy and her husband, Peter, arrive at the school they helped build for this small Samoan village, the eerie silence tells a grim story. The children are gone. A policeman confirms what appears to be the worst. Any loss of life?
POLICEMAN: Yeah, we're still looking for seven, three kids.
KARL STEFANOVIC: And these were the beautiful, innocent faces of Samoa. Not a care in the world, their lives before them - an idyllic life by the sea, filled with laughter and precious memories. Now, those smiles and a generation for this village is gone.
WENDY O'NEILL: It's not the place we know and love any more, and I don't think it will be again. It's very surreal. We've only ever come here for happy times, and this is really, really sad and distressing.
KARL STEFANOVIC: But, somehow, among all the destruction, there have been some survivors. We find them high, on top of a mountain huddled under makeshift housing. The injured, young and old, just lucky to be alive. And it's this man, the village pastor, Wendy and Peter have been searching for.
WENDY O'NEILL: I'm so glad you're OK.
PASTOR YAEA ISARAELU: Wendy, I'm sorry, some of the kids you met this year -
WENDY O'NEILL: I know. I've got all their photos.
KARL STEFANOVIC: Yaea Isaraelu witnessed mother nature's unforgiving ferocity first-hand. Describe to me what it was like the morning of the tsunami.
PASTOR YAEA ISARAELU: All of a sudden, we saw this huge big wave came. It was so powerful. It smashed everything in its way. It was unbelievable, Couldn't believe the sight of it.
KARL STEFANOVIC: At 6:30 in the morning, Samoa was struck by a massive earthquake. The shame of all of this is that it should have triggered a tsunami warning, allowing villagers enough time to move to higher ground. That warning never came, so children were out on this previously idyllic beach playing. They were in the water. Some were walking to school along the road. By the time they saw that great wave coming, it was too late - there was no escape, and all this damage happened in less than a minute. Was there any warning at all, besides what you saw?
PASTOR YAEA ISARAELU: No, none at all. I think they could have given us some signal.
KARL STEFANOVIC: But anger is not an emotion that can help these people right now. There are so many more urgent concerns. Wendy and Pastor Yaea are sifting through photos of the children lost. This woman alone will need to say goodbye to three of her grandchildren. Yet, she's also in need of medical attention. Wendy's sister Lyn is here to help, too, to do what she can. A registered nurse, this is bigger than anything she's seen, and it's personal. Lyn, I guess there's only so much one nurse can do here.
LYN: That's certainly right. She's got a massive haematoma on her right buttock, and a dressing on her right buttock as well.
KARL STEFANOVIC: If she was in Australia, would she be in hospital?
LYN: Yeah.
KARL STEFANOVIC: The town's people may now be safe out of harm's reach, but there is a sobering reality. The search for the missing continues, not only here, but across Samoa's ravaged coastline. Just what do have all of these people have left of their lives and their homes?
PASTOR YAEA ISARAELU: Most, 90% of the people, have nothing.
KARL STEFANOVIC: But, for a people who live amongst nature and at her mercy, there is hope and there is faith. That is all they have.
WENDY O'NEILL: The children, they know that something awful has happened but, they're children, and they can just keep playing, and good luck to them. They fall, they bounce back laughing. They are just gorgeous.
