’Everyone screamed’: Indonesia earthquake witnesses recount horror

As an earthquake of 5.6 magnitude hit Indonesia, panicked residents swarmed the streets to save themselves, while some of them watched their houses collapsing. Hours later, the hospitals were filled with the injured. Agus Azhari, 19, was with his mother in their home when the living room was destroyed within seconds by the quake.

Recounting the horror of the earthquake, Agus Azhari said he held his mother’s hand and ran towards the door when parts of wall and the roof fell down, as his mother cried “Lord have mercy! My house!”

"I couldn't see anything. The dust from the debris blocked my sight for a while," Azhari told AFP, adding, “I pulled my mother's hand and we ran outside. I heard people screaming for help from all around me."

"My mother looked at her house and she cried," Azhari said.

As the number of people with wounds increased, residents of Cianjur, the worst-hit part, residents took the lifeless bodies to Sayang hospital in bikes and pickup trucks. Since there were power outages, doctors were not able to operate on the injured immediately.

According to the AFP report, several people arrived at another hospital covered in blood, and some looked for their missing kin. The governor said some residents had received injuries in their heads and feet that needed to be stitched back together.

Oman, a 55-year-old who, like most Indonesians goes by one name, was making fried rice in a village near Cianjur when his house started to sway. "All of a sudden I was crushed beneath it. I could do nothing in the rubble. My wife was outside at the time," he said.

AFP reported that his feet, legs and hands were squeezed in the ruins but his son arrived to pull him free, emerging with only a broken leg and a bloodied body. "I did not know where to go but at least I am alive," Oman was quoted as saying.

(With AFP inputs)