October 12, 2002 — page 3

By midnight, police and fire fighters had reached the street. Traffic head Haji Bambang coordinated the evacuation of the injured to local hospitals and clinics, making the trip back and forth for hours. "We were trying to get the victims out because of the danger of explosions—gas canisters in the bar, the Freon in the air conditioners—and of the roofs falling down," he says. He admits that he and his team were afraid of being injured. "But we were inspired by the American fire fighters who were willing to sacrifice themselves when the World Trade Center was bombed, so we wanted to do the same."

Heiress Theile and her three female friends had walked right into the impending inferno. Theile's German visitor was badly burned; American Snodgrass suffered fatal wounds from flying debris. Avilés, the friend from Ecuador, was also gravely injured. When rescue workers moved her to the alley behind the Sari Club, one of her lungs was punctured and she made sucking sounds when she breathed. The workers put a plastic bag over the wound to prevent the lung from collapsing. When an ambulance finally arrived, it seemed Avilés had a chance. But by the time she was lifted into the ambulance she had died. The fate of Theile herself would not be known for hours.

Nyoman Sudirka, the 21-year-old fiancé of Sari Club cashier Ayu, was frantic when he heard of the bombings. His first thought was to make a wish: "I hope my girlfriend is O.K." Nyoman and his friends drove a flatbed truck to the scene. They loaded as many injured as they could, while Nyoman searched vainly for his fiancé. An hour went by before Nyoman finally got a call from a friend saying Ayu was alive. He rushed to a nearby clinic where she was waiting to be treated for a burn on her left forearm. Nyoman yelled at the nurses, "Why don't you treat her? I'll pay you whatever you want, just treat her." Nyoman says many bule, or foreigners, were being treated first. Ayu says her injuries just weren't as severe.

Nick Burgoyne, a 38-year-old Yorkshire native who adopted Bali as his home, found out about the bombings at 12:30 a.m. He grabbed his digital camera and went to Jalan Legian, later selling some of his photos to newspapers and the BBC. Then he went to Sanglah Hospital, the chaotic center of the race to save lives. In the emergency room, Burgoyne sat down next to Martin, a Brazilian in his thirties, who had more than 30 holes in his face from glass that shattered in the bombings. Burgoyne met a couple of vacationing physicians from Australia who had come to help: Pria, an anesthesiologist, and Veej, a plastic surgeon specializing in the treatment of burns. Some of the staff at Sanglah were already delirious from overwork, so Burgoyne helped Pria and Veej clean and dress burns.

Jodie O'Shea, 29, a former publishing assistant in Sydney who had recently opened her own small business, had severe burns on her arms that were filling with fluid. She couldn't feel her fingers; if left unattended, the swelling would have cut off the blood flow to her hands. The two doctors performed emergency surgery, slicing through the skin. Jodie said she felt better: she didn't notice the absence of anaesthetic.

After attending several similar operations, Burgoyne went back to chat with Jodie. "She was the girl next door," he says. "She was so sweet." As they were talking, Jodie started to slip into a coma. Burgoyne and the two doctors started frantically pumping saline into her. She slipped in and out of coma for the next few hours. When the Australian medical evacuation planes arrived Sunday evening, Burgoyne wheeled Jodie out of Sanglah to a waiting ambulance and tearfully said goodbye.

At 2:16, Haji Bambang was standing between the Sari Club and Paddy's and he felt something on his foot. He thought it was a stick and kicked it away. A moment later he felt it again. He looked down, and found a finger reaching up out of a manhole trying to grab his shoe. He squatted and looked into the sewer. To his mystification, a Chinese- or Japanese-looking woman was inside. His group lifted her out and carried her to an ambulance. Haji Bambang didn't catch her name, but found out later that she had been evacuated to Singapore. (The woman was either Kaho Brown, 28, or Ayano Saito, 30, Japanese sisters who were the only East Asian women to be medevacked to Singapore. By late last week, both were alive but in intensive care and heavily sedated.)

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next >>

Get the Magazine — Try 4 Issues Free!

	INDIA/PAKISTAN Back from the Brink On both sides, forces pull pack from the India-Pakistan border. How long can this thaw last? MOVIES A Sigh for Old Saigon The made-in-Vietnam film of Graham Greene's The Quiet American looks at love and war, and the strange bedfellows they make NORTH KOREA Look Who's Got the Bomb Confronted by the U.S., North Korea brazenly admits it's building nukes. Now what does President Bush do? TRAVEL Homestay on the Range In the former Soviet Republic of Kyrgyzstan, My Yurt is Your Yurt