West Midland firefighters fly to Indonesia after earthquake
SEARCH and rescue experts from West Midlands Fire Service have flown out to Indonesia in a battle to save lives following the earthquake disaster.
A team of six firefighters left from Gatwick Airport last night to join teams from Germany, Turkey, Singapore, Japan, Switzerland and Hungary.
Andy Young, spokesman for the Fire Service, said: “We have deployed our international search and rescue team after a request for humanitarian help.
“They will be responsible for mobilisation, reception and the command and control on arrival at Padang Airport.”
The official death toll in the Sumatra quake has now reached more than 1,000, but rescuers said it would rise with thousands more trapped under the 500 collapsed or badly damaged buildings from the first quake in Padang which started a number of fires.
And a second powerful earthquake rocked western Indonesia yesterday.
The latest, 6.8-magnitude quake damaged hundreds of additional buildings, and communications remained cut in some areas.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said: “Let’s be prepared for the worst. We will do everything we can to help the victims.”
The latest quakes were along the same fault line that spawned the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen nations.
Meanwhile, British consular officials were trying to trace up to 16 British nationals thought to have been in the area when the tsunami struck.
These include the two-year-old son of a British couple swept out to sea.
