SURVIVING SUMATRA
GEORGE NEGUS: David, looking at that scene from the air as you were arriving in Padang, you can't see any sign, really, of the devastation below.
DAVID BRILL: Tranquil, George. Very tranquil. As we were coming in, late afternoon, we had to circle around a couple of times because other military C-130s were landing with supplies. As we circled around, I looked out the window and it was just like you were going to paradise - just the late afternoon light, that golden light on the beaches
GEORGE NEGUS: What a lie that was!
DAVID BRILL: And what a lie that was, 'cause when you actually get down there and you see the devastation it's quite the opposite. Every second or third building had been destroyed. We came across an area where a lot of hotels, I think, mainly for tourists - big, expensive hotels, beautiful hotels - and they were all in rubble, all down to rubble. It was a very weird experience. And then we tried to go inside some of the buildings with the experts to find if anybody was still alive in there - they were still hoping people were alive at this stage - or to find bodies. And as I was walking around there and filming they found a handbag, which they picked up - a woman's handbag.
GEORGE NEGUS: Some sign of life maybe?
DAVID BRILL: Maybe some sign of life or somebody had been buried under the rock in there who'd died and they found her security card and they sent somebody off to find out whether she was still alive or had got out or whatever. Also, Pepsi drinks left on the table with straws, as if people
GEORGE NEGUS: I noticed that in your shot. Probably the people who were drinking that Pepsi were killed.
DAVID BRILL: Probably were killed.
GEORGE NEGUS: But the Pepsi's still there to remind us.
DAVID BRILL: The Pepsi was still there, and it was just an eerie feeling to think that a day or so before people were sitting there enjoying themselves and the drinks were still there.
GEORGE NEGUS: The rescue workers at that stage, David - that's only a few days after, two or three days after the actual event, the quake itself - they probably were still hopeful of finding people alive underneath the rubble, which is almost impossible to believe.
DAVID BRILL: At that stage, yes. They thought they heard noises. All the experts, all these people, were just waiting on the outside there - in their red uniforms - waiting to be called in if they found any movement or any noise. At one stage they thought they did – they sent the people in, they stopped the bulldozers and sent the people in, but there was nothing.
IN SUMATRA
REPORTER: Where are we going now?
MAN 1: We are going to the market of the old Chinatown.
DAVID BRILL: I ran into this guy who spoke a bit of English and he said, "Oh, I lived in Australia." He asked me where I was from and I said "SBS Australia". And he said, "It's worse than this - come and I'll show you Chinatown".
IN SUMATRA
REPORTER: So this is all over here, eh?
MAN 1: Yes. This is the most heaviest one. Three people got buried here and we already take them out and the rest
DAVID BRILL: And shop after shop, house after house, just flattened. Cars flattened. And it's something not many people had been to. He said to me, "A lot of experts haven't been here yet." You saw the bulldozers out on the main drag, the main area, where all the big hotels are, because the roads were wider. Where the Chinatown was they couldn't get a lot of these trucks into this area to dig up all the rubble.
IN SUMATRA
REPORTER: Dear, oh dear, sir. Very bad, eh? Very bad.
MAN 2: It's very bad.
DAVID BRILL: I met this very refined Indonesian gentleman who spoke a little bit of English, who had a pair of long Bermuda shorts on and a lovely shirt. He was sitting down, having a cigarette, in the remains of his hotel, on one of the sofas with rubble all around him and stuff. And I said to him, "How are you?" He said, "I'm 91 years of age. "I've never seen anything as bad as this. "My hotel," he said, "I built it in 1967."
GEORGE NEGUS: So he actually said it was the worst he'd had seen?
DAVID BRILL: Yes, yes. Then he said, "I've put another extension on my hotel." I look out to the left there and it had all gone - all this brand-new part of the hotel. But what I noticed, George - with him and with many of the Indonesians - is how relaxed... or how they just take it, just accept it and move on and get on with it. It's an amazing thing to see this - "Well, this has happened to us."What we've got to do now is rebuild and start again." He said it was too old for him - he's 91 - but his sons will take over and rebuild.
GEORGE NEGUS: Soon after, David - probably the next day - you saw some pretty awful scenes in the hospital in Padang - the victims, the injuries to kids and older people. Tell us about that. That is not nice, no matter how many times you see it.
DAVID BRILL: Well, as you know, George - and we've both done this - there's a lot of hospitals we've been into over the last 40 years of devastation, of earthquakes or children who've lost limbs, landmines in wars and things like this. It never changes. It never changes. It's the same thing - particularly children. This hospital in Padang had been hit as well by the earthquake - so parts that were knocked down, parts that were still operating. I just walked in and here are all these children in bed - some of them crying, some of them in shock - with their parents or the nursing staff were there trying to help them, fanning them with little fans because there was no electricity, much, going. Just fanning them there and they were just laying there in tremendous pain. And you think to yourself, "Why these children with just their lives starting?" I came across one little girl - a beautiful little girl - she had one leg poking out with just some bandages over it. I said to her mother, "Hopefully she's alright? It doesn't look too serious." And she said 'no' - through an interpreter - that they had to amputate her other leg off. And she's about nine and it hit me all of a sudden that her life has changed forever. That's just one example of hundreds of children. The next day I wanted to get out of the city. I felt, "There's enough of the city, but there are outlying areas" that people tend to forget about.
GEORGE NEGUS: Exactly.
DAVID BRILL: Or the experts can't get there for whatever reason - whether they can't get their trucks in or they are too busy helping the people in city. And I think, "Well, hang on, what about the outlying areas?" So I try to get to a place called Pariaman, which is about three hours drive away. On the way, there were bodies in body bags - the smell reminded me very much of war - waiting in the heat there, it was incredibly hot, to be picked up by ambulances and taken to a morgue, hopefully. You see this all the way along and you see all these houses that are destroyed. But once we got up to the end of this track, there was this big bulldozer digging away there, and I wondered what it was all about.
GEORGE NEGUS: We are looking at those pictures now. It looks a bit like a gigantic sandpit. But what are we actually looking at? We are looking at a burial ground.
DAVID BRILL: That's right, George.
GEORGE NEGUS: Created by an earthquake and a landslide.
DAVID BRILL: Absolutely. And nothing left of any homes whatsoever. You wouldn't know unless somebody told you.
GEORGE NEGUS: How many people, did they think?
DAVID BRILL: 400. This was on the side of a mountain or a hill and the bulldozers were just digging away quietly
GEORGE NEGUS: That's what we're looking at now?
DAVID BRILL: Yes. Trying to find if there's any life there. They've got to be very careful, of course, because you could end up killing somebody who was still alive from that dreadful earthquake. They had the sniffer dogs there - the dogs going down, trying to get a sniff if anybody was alive. Then I realised - and somebody told me in broken English - that when the earthquake happened and all the rain and so on totally destroyed this whole village nothing was left, except for I saw a couple of people walking with an old bedpost or whatever.
GEORGE NEGUS: That bed that we're looking at is pretty much the only sign that anybody lived there. And you're talking about 400.
DAVID BRILL: 400 people-plus, and on the other side of the creek it was a scene like out of Bali - beautiful green jungle
GEORGE NEGUS: We're looking at it now.
DAVID BRILL: and there's there devastation and you realise it's just a mass grave.
GEORGE NEGUS: So probably where these earthmovers are working now, as we're looking at it, was exactly like the other side of the valley.
DAVID BRILL: Yes, very similar. And I heard on their way back that they had decided to stop looking for people because they said it would be better to spend the money for looking after the living and not looking after the dead or trying to get the dead out and turn it into a mass grave.
GEORGE NEGUS: Despite all of this - this devastation and this death and horrible situation, somehow or other life manages to go on.
DAVID BRILL: As you and I've seen many, many times over the last 40 years or so, it does. One day I was out where they were digging, looking for people. There was a guy there with an ice-cream stand and with the music that they play at an ice-cream stand, selling ice-creams to make a buck. Also on the roads going down to some of this devastation, people - kids mainly - are holding boxes trying to get money, because they can't get it from the government. So it's their way of getting enough money to pass to their friends in the villages to survive on.
GEORGE NEGUS: Then, as if they didn't need it, down came that tropical downpour, that monsoon that they were fearing would happening - because I can see in the pictures we have here that on top of everything else, literally, a downpour.
DAVID BRILL: As the clouds were forming, as you said, and people with nowhere to live, nowhere to go, their houses totally gone, down came the rain - heavy rain - and they were rushing to find somewhere to get under a tree or whatever. But they were worried about disease, of course, when the monsoon rains came.
GEORGE NEGUS: In the days that you were there they were talking about 600 deaths and thousands of injuries and lots of missing people. The latest figure that I've seen is at least 1,300 deaths and thousands of injuries and thousands more missing. Was anybody suggesting to you what the toll might be in the long run?
DAVID BRILL: It was too early because the experts hadn't had a chance or couldn’t get out to a lot of these villages, but, as you know, yourself, 1,300 and it's not even over - it can easily double. And under some of those big areas out in the countryside whole villages are gone. I've mentioned one - 400 people - that's just one village. Some of the real outlying areas, I heard, even the aid agencies or the authorities haven't gone too.
GEORGE NEGUS: Do you have a couple of lasting memories you could share with us that you've shot? Things that you've shot that sorted of summed up something about the whole situation?
DAVID BRILL: After doing this for so long what hits me is the resilience of people and the decency of the people. They've lost everything and they're still so well mannered - by offering you a cup of tea, for instance. There was one man, an old man, his house totally gone, sitting beside, late in the afternoon, praying.
GEORGE NEGUS: On his prayer mat.
DAVID BRILL: On his prayer mat.
GEORGE NEGUS: I can see it in that shot now.
DAVID BRILL: And it was very moving. There he was, sitting quietly on his own amongst all this rubble.
GEORGE NEGUS: One of his five prayers for that day.
DAVID BRILL: Yes. One other sequence that I did late in the afternoon after spending time with Save the Children when they were giving out the supplies and the tarpaulin, this lady put it on top of her head, said "Thank you, Mister" and walked off down the track back to start again. That's all she had left.
Reporter/Camera
DAVID BRILL
Additional Cameras
EDORARDO FALCONIO
GRANT JORDAN
Editor
NICK O’BRIEN
Producer
PETER CHARLEY