Help at half rods

Fuel was being rationed amid a power outage, water and food were in short supply and villagers dug out the dead with their bare hands.
As the scale of the destruction became clearer, Vice President Jusuf Kalla told reporters in the capital, Jakarta, that the recovery operation would cost at least $400 million.
Military and commercial planes shuttled in tons of emergency supplies, although rural areas remained cut off due to landslides that reportedly crushed several villages and killed nearly 300 people.
While the damage was most severe around Padang, an Associated Press reporter saw virtually no remaining structures in the rural, hilly district of Pariaman, a community of about 370,000 about 50 miles to the north.
Landslides had wiped away roads and there was no sign of outside help.
In Padang, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told a crowd of people whose relatives are missing to "please be patient," assuring them the government was doing everything in its power to save lives.
Millions of dollars in aid and financial assistance came from Australia, Britain, China, Germany, Japan, the European Union, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, Denmark and the United States, Indonesian officials said.
Wednesday's quake originated on the same fault line that spawned the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen nations.