SAVED BY THE 'WINDSHIP'

Half our medical team is back from the mountains west of Gomo exhausted by the 4 hour descent. The rest flew out on a Mercy chopper with a critically ill patient.

ELM volunteer doctor Aliza Weinman reported from the USN Mercy this morning: "Hulu Hukkubah had almost 2 liters of purulent fluid removed by chest tube from his left lung, which almost certainly saved his life. He is on strong antibiotics and is improving."

Hulu (60) suffered a heart attack when his village split in two during the quake and his family feared he would not survive being carried down the mountain. They did not understand what had happened to him and nursed him as best they could for the past weeks. Pneumonia set in and his body functions started to shut down.

Our ELM/OB/NWM team were the first westerners to ever visit this remarkably remote village and there has been no local medical support to the area before our arrival. Dr Dave Lange took one look at Hulu and asked me to call the Batavia to arrange a medivac. After struggling with a non functioning sat phone for a while I took a walk to the highest point in the village. Looking east I saw the ocean and as my eyes followed the ridge I spotted a white dot in the deep V of the river gorge that is the only way into these highlands. Not believing my eyes I turned on my hand held VHF and called the ship. We were at least 30km inland and I had no real hope of reaching anyone. The village people around me jumped in amazement as Adam answered clear as a bell! VHF is line of sight and had the ship been anchored a few hundred meters north or south I would never have seen her and the radio would not have worked. The rest was easy. Formerly enlisted US Navy Coms operator Marshall Bailey took over on Batavia’s bridge and soon we radioed thru the lat and long using Dr Dave’s hand held GPS. Mercy confirmed that they would arrive at 6.45am if we could clear a landing area as the sun was setting and a night operation was deemed too risky.


Dr Rommy from OB at work

After our night clinic finished at 10pm, the village men took the only pressure lamp and started extending and clearing the only piece of flat land in the vicinity. Small trees were cut down and a rough rice bag H pegged out with bamboo spikes.



As we were about to climb into the traditional house’s loft, a vicious aftershock hit. The men grabbed a child each and sprung out the door with the women clutching babies close behind. We were much slower and we stumbled out in confusion leaving poor Hulu to watch as the structure swayed and groaned. Suddenly we understood why everyone wants to live in a tent. Until you feel the fear , see the buildings sway and hear the noise, it is all a bit academic.

We enlisted the help of Dr Laia who lives in Gomo to help us explain to the nervous village what we knew about earthquakes and aftershocks. We eventually managed to convince ourselves that it was safe to sleep upstairs and all of us climbed up the narrow ladder to retire on the floor boards. The village had no spare bedding, no water for washing and no toilets but we were past caring and did our best to sleep while Hulu coughed and moaned below us. It was a long night.



The chopper arrived on time but after a few attempts they winched down a crewmember and hovered about 10m above our now clearly tiny helipad. “Tail rotor is too close to the trees and the slope makes approach too dangerous” yelled the flight crew. We helped strap Hulu into a stretcher and braced against the rotor wash as one by one our team followed up the wire. In 30 minutes the chopper moved maybe 1 or 2 meters at most. An awesome display of skill.



Minutes after the chopper climbed and the blast died down the Kepala Desa ran to me and said “We must make a new place for the WindShip to dock! Please show us where is the best place” We walked to the edge of the small helipad and I was shocked to see that we were looking into the void left by a massive rift that stretched from the village way up into the mountains above us. I moved everyone back and wondered if the weight of a chopper might bring the whole area down in a land slide. We set off to look further up the ridge.



Hilimbaruzo is a deeply traditional kampung. It lies at the end of a blind ridge a 5km hike up from Gomo. It is one of 38 villages in the Kabupaten (subdistrict) that can only be reached by foot. The village dates back at least 150 years but now the residents are all convinced that they will have to move.



The March 28 quake dropped a 150m wide section of the village (Dusun Siraha) straight down at least 50m. Most of the trees are still standing but they are all skewed at crazy angles. A few houses lie almost intact but 7 were swallowed by the earth and there is no sign of them. Miraculously only 2 people died and they described their descent as slow enough for them to run to hang onto trees as the earth buckled and fractured all around.

The visual impact is difficult to capture with a camera. The rift subsidence extends several kilometers to the east and then curves past the village to the west. Sheer walls of gravel and clay overlook the jumbled landscape that has dropped vertically without any sign of a land slide or horizontal displacement. An unforgettable sight and one this community must now live with and reconcile with their future.