'It feels as though we are in a war. There is rubble and dust and bodies everywhere'

At what was left of the Gama Court School in Padang, south Sumatra, scores of people stood silently in the dust late into the night, many weeping as diggers dragged away huge blocks of stone.

This is where dozens of teenage girls remain buried after their classrooms crumbled around them.

As one father jabbed desperately at his mobile telephone, trying to connect to his daughter lost under the rubble, the 14-year-old girl’s uncle said: “It is the most tragic thing. They were studying after school to be better students and now they are dead.”

When the 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck Padang on Wednesday evening thousands of people poured into the streets. Some escaped as buildings collapsed behind them. It is feared that thousands more were trapped.

Last night workers using heavy machinery and cutters tried to reach the buried. Until the machinery arrived, rescuers had clawed their way through the rubble with their hands.

Nofli Khlas, the senior surgeon at Jamil hospital, where the most seriously injured people have been taken, said: “I don’t think they will find anyone alive under these buildings now.”

The death toll stands at 1,100, according to the UN, with hundreds of people seriously injured, but the numbers are expected to increase.

The surgeon said that 48 bodies had been taken to the hospital yesterday afternoon; last night a dozen remained in the hospital grounds. There was nowhere else to put them.

Dr Khlas and the 80 medical staff at the hospital are working in primitive conditions. The hospital was damaged by the earthquake and two makeshift tents have become the operating theatres. In each two tables are laid out side by side. Pools of blood stain the floor and discarded gloves and surgical equipment are piled in the corners.

“We are working in wartime conditions,” Dr Khlas said. “It feels like we are in a war. It is as if my city has been bombed. There is rubble and dust and bodies everywhere. But it’s not a war we are winning. We are desperately short of medicine, only just managing to keep the whole situation together.”

He added: “Usually we have plenty of warning when earthquakes come. They start small in the regions and by the time they are strong we have run away. But this time the earthquake came hard and fast and no one had time to run.”

Patients have multiple fractures and abdominal injuries — some so bad that they are not expected to live. While The Times spoke to one patient, the family at a bed across the ward pulled the blanket gently over the head of a relative who had died.

There are stories of hope. Elena, 24, lay on a bed surrounded by her family. She had been at work when the earthquake struck and was dragged from the rubble after more than 15 hours. “She tried to run but the building caught her,” said her uncle, Ed. “We had given up hope.” She was in one of at least 500 buildings in Padang that collapsed or were damaged. They include hospitals, mosques and a shopping centre.

Another patient was pulled out by his cousin who saw his foot wiggling in a little gap. Dr Khlas escaped from a building just before it collapsed.

Asman Rusin and his 20-year-old daughter, Jana, were reunited at Padang airport. Mr Rusin rushed to the city to find Jana when he heard about the earthquake. She told him that she did what they had been trained to do — take refuge in a tsunami shelter.

As dusk fell, hundreds of people huddled in the streets, too frightened to return to their homes. “All our homes have been badly damaged,” Sufeiman, a mechanic, said. “All last night we felt the tremors and we felt them again this morning. We are much too scared to go indoors.”

Siti, a resident of Padang, begged for outside help. “We need aid as soon as possible. We need food and medicine. Our houses have collapsed,” he said. “There are people still trapped.”

At the Ambacang Hotel, 50 businessmen in a meeting were buried with scores of families who were in rooms at the back of the building. The Dutch colonial seven-storey building is now a pile of masonry from which emanates the stench of death.

Diggers have worked all night to smash through the stone but no bodies have been found.

The work of rescuers has been made difficult because electricity and communications have been cut off and landslips have blocked roads into the city.

Patrick Werner, 28, a German tourist at the airport, was on a beach when the earthquake struck. “We saw some cracks emerge in the soil and water come out of the ground like it was Universal Studios. We grabbed our passports and some money and ran up to the street,” he said.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian President, pledged to do “everything we can to help the victims”.

“Let’s not underestimate [the disaster]. Let’s be prepared for the worst,” he said in Jakarta before flying to Padang.

Unicef said that tens of thousands of people had been made homeless, one third of them children.

Barack Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Jakarta, said that he was moved by the loss of life.

“Indonesia is an extraordinary country who has known extraordinary hardships from natural disasters. I know that the Indonesian people are strong and resilient and have the heart to overcome this challenge,” the US President said.

Padang, a sprawling city renowned for its surf beaches, is used to earthquakes. Geologists have warned for a long time that the low-lying city is vulnerable.

In 2007 it was hit by an 8.4 magnitude earthquake but the suddenness and shallow depth of this earthquake caused more devastation.

Throughout the city, balconies shaken loose by the tremor dangle over streets and rows of houses tilt at seemingly impossible angles. Hundreds of residents have fled to the airport where they are waiting for help or to escape. Link...