Girls found alive under crushed Sumatra school

Rescuers are scrambling to save three girls buried alive under the rubble of their school, on the earthquake-ravaged Indonesian island South Sumatra. Faint voices could be heard deep under the crumpled Lia School building in Padang, the worst – hit city, this morning after the quake struck two days ago. The schoolgirls were studying English in their ground-floor classroom when the quake crushed the school on Wednesday, burying their classroom deep under the earth and killing four pupils. Rescuers have so far managed to pull out four more children alive, but the children still trapped are too deeply buried for anyone to pass them water or food through the cracks in the rubble.

More than 1,000 people have died in the quake, according to figures from the United Nations, with 3,000 people still thought trapped under rubble, Indonesia’s disaster management agency told the Associated Press news agency. Rescuers worked by floodlights through the night using an earthmover as they tried to find students beneath the collapsed three-storey school. Sixty children were in the school when it collapsed The Jakarta Post reported.

Rina was pulled out of the rubble at Lia yesterday after spending four hours under a pile of stones. “I had a test in my English class” the 14 year old told The Times newspaper. “I waited for my teacher in the corridor and the quake struck. I tried to run but it was so hard. I fell down and the building came down around my body. I cried for help but no-one came. I waited for four hours until I was pulled out around 9pm.” Many of the teachers had raced to the third floor when the quake struck, fearing a tsunami but left the girls to fend for themselves, said an aidworker. But hope is now running out for many of those still buried. "We have pulled out 38 children since the quake. Some of them, on the first day, were still alive, but the last few have all been dead," a rescue worker told Reuters news agency.

The Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari has appealed for foreign aid to help asking for skilled rescuers with specialist equipment. A team of 60 British firefighters were this morning heading out from London, to help. Sumatra lies close to the geological fault line that triggered the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children