By Reme Ahmad, Assistant Foreign Editor
People in Padang were trying to get back on their feet yesterday, with a vegetable seller near the destroyed Padang market waiting for customers at her makeshift stall (left), and staff and volunteers at a quake-hit hospital retrieving anything which was still in usable condition, from chairs and computers, to towels. -- ST PHOTOS: DESMOND LIM, CAROLINE CHIA
Straits Times, 6 Oct 2009
PADANG (WEST SUMATRA): It was the fifth day after the earth raged and shook and swallowed people and places, but life, irrepressible life, stirred once again in this city yesterday.
Near busy road junctions, pushcart food vendors who scurried away last week, reappeared to jostle for space to peddle their steaming lontong, mee bakso and soto.
Lunch queues began forming, ATM machines started churning out much-needed cash and stalls at the main market reopened to a roaring trade.
The popular Lubok Idai nasi padang place - which was back in business on Saturday - served to packed crowds at meal times yesterday.
Near busy road junctions, pushcart food vendors who scurried away last week, reappeared to jostle for space to peddle their steaming lontong, mee bakso and soto.
'I am working again after helping neighbours whose houses were damaged. There are many more people on the streets compared to a few days ago and that is good,' said food vendor Abdul Salam, when I bought his lontong rice cakes.
A senior executive with Permata Bank came into town to help its staff of 31 people back on their feet after the trauma of a 7.6-magnitude quake that hit this West Sumatran capital.
'We have to raise staff morale because they are in shock,' Mr Zulfikar Amiruddin, the bank's head of industrial relations, told me when I met him at the bank.
A Pizza Hut restaurant opened on Sunday, and workers at the main Toyota showroom showed up for work.
Students also began trickling back to school yesterday.
Mr Amson Simbolon said the move, on a Monday, was deliberate. 'The government called for classes to resume as soon as possible so they can create some normalcy,' said the education officer for Unicef.
One of the students at a high school in East Padang, Tri Raswati, 17, said: 'The building is safe enough but we have no power, and water doesn't always come out of the tap.'
At another school, however, children were turned away, because of the danger of collapse of a nearby structure. Many public buildings collapsed in the quake, raising questions about construction standards in a quake-prone area.
Many locals, like Sribersihwati, 30, say they hope builders and the local government will recognise the mistakes made in the development of the city, which has boomed in recent years.
'There should be regulations and strong monitoring from the local government regarding the construction of buildings,' Ms Sribersihwati told AFP.
'The corruption problem is a concern. Why were there so many tall buildings that didn't bother with strong construction?' she said.
Officials have promised to enforce tougher building codes. West Sumatra's governor, Mr Gamawan Fauzi, said he would issue a new law to ensure all buildings are built to withstand a magnitude-8 quake.
For now though, residents in this city of 900,000 are coping with the tragedy that claimed nearly a thousand lives - and many more unaccounted for - and trying to return to normality.
Some, like car workshop owner Hasbullah, 37, have tried to put on a brave front. This was the price of living in a quake-prone zone, he seemed to say as he shrugged his shoulders and pointed out to me that Padangites feel a temblor under their feet every few months.
Most are small quakes, with the last big one in September 2007 when dozens died.
'Every time it happens, we run out of our houses for a few hours, maybe even camp out for a few days, and then we go back home to start over,' he said, with barely a trace of sadness.
Starting over is proving to be harder for many though.
Thousands of homes and offices in Padang still do not have electricity and water. Generator sets help provide power to many restaurants, hotels and homes.
�Work taking place everywhere to try and recover bodies from the rubble continued until mid-afternoon yesterday, the air in these parts a melange of death, decay and tears.
Madam Beti was one of those who sat for several days at the site of a collapsed hotel.
Her husband Mr Aswat, 39, was on the fourth floor of the collapsed Ambacang Hotel attending a fisheries seminar when the earthquake struck on Wednesday evening.
Each time a body was pulled out, she would rush up, pushing rescue workers aside to have a look.
'No, it was not him,' she told a female relative, the Sunday afternoon I was there, as she sat down again on a rock, wiping her eyes.
Yesterday, when they called off the search efforts, I walked past the hotel site. Madam Beti was not sitting on her rock.
Did she find her husband, I wondered.
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