- For more on Asia-Pacific disasters, click [ID:nSP24809] * Helicopters only way to reach some remote areas * Survivor recalls lucky escape from collapsed hotel * Pneumonia key health risk for survivors * Official death toll about 1,000 By Razak Ahmad and Thin Lei Win PADANG, Indonesia, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Relief workers struggled to reach Indonesian quake survivors still without food or shelter a week after the disaster, while foreign rescue teams packed up their high-tech equipment on Wednesday and prepared to pull out. Aid has been pouring into the shattered West Sumatran city of Padang since the Sept. 30 earthquake, but the scale of the disaster, heavy rain and damaged infrastructure have meant it has been slow to reach outlying areas. Helicopters are often the only way that some communities in the hills around Padang can be reached after landslides triggered by the 7.6 magnitude quake severed roads. "I'm now living in a tent. We have not received any aid. I'm very upset with the local government. I see aid but it passed us by," said a visibly emotional Ardi, 31, from Lubuk Laweh, an area outside Padang that was devastated by landslides. The father-of-four said he had lost an 8-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son in the landslide, which cut a deadly path through the village leaving only a huge wall of mud and debris. Work using heavy equipment to bring down half-collapsed buildings in Padang, a port city of 900,000, continued, despite fears many bodies may still be under the rubble. There was a brief moment of hope on Tuesday when workers thought they had heard a woman crying for help under the rubble of the collapsed Dutch-colonial era Ambacang hotel. But an Australian rescue team later turned up nothing. Indonesia's official toll from the quake is 704 dead and 295 missing, but the health minister said it could reach 3,000. SAVED BY A COFFEE Ghazali, 28, described his lucky escape after he had been taking part in a training programme with 40 people for insurance firm Prudential at the Ambacang on the day of the quake. The trainee insurance agent, who is staying with relatives, said he briefly left the hotel to buy a coffee in a cafe across the street because the hotel drinks were too pricey for him. "I sat down and the hotel collapsed," he said, adding that he had been too shocked since to tell authorities he was safe. Rescue teams from countries including South Korea, Singapore and Britain were starting on Wednesday to pack up and leave their base in the governor's house in Padang, as even the faint hope of finding more survivors in buildings reduced to rubble faded. John Bugge, a spokesman for the charity Save the children, said pneumonia was a key risk now, particularly for children lacking food and shelter in scattered communities around Padang. Some schools have reopened, but according UNICEF about 1,000 have collapsed or been damaged so some temporary centres in tents have been set up for traumatised children to play and draw. "I am still scared that there may be more earthquakes, and so I told my mother that we must never sleep inside our house again because it could collapse." said Yuhza Indra, 11, who was at a temporary centre in Desa Bungus Timur on the outskirts of Padang. (Additional reporting by Dylan Martinez in Padang and Olivia Rondonuwu and Retno Palupi in Jakarta; Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Alex Richardson)
A survivor walks inside a mosque damaged by a powerful earthquake that struck Padang October 7, 2009. REUTERS/Enny Nuraheni (INDONESIA DISASTER ENVIRONMENT) ...
