Aid worker Mark Snelling is in quake-hit Indonesia with the British Red Cross. He tells of the scramble to get urgent relief to thousands of survivors.

Sunday, May 28

I'm doing some gardening when the phone rings with the emergency response call-up. No matter how long one works for the Red Cross, it is always surreal having suddenly to absorb the prospect of a far-flung catastrophe in the middle of an average day at home.

My destination is the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta with the logistics Emergency Response Unit (ERU) of the British Red Cross. The standby alert was issued from the International Federation on Saturday, hours after the earthquake hit the south coast of Java island. Now it's confirmed and we're off.

It's hard to get a sense of what we're heading into. Separating the reality from the possible hype of media reports is always tricky. But all the indications are that it is horrendous. Official figures are putting the death toll well into the thousands and the numbers of displaced at about 200,000. There has been massive structural damage to buildings.

On top of that, the region is already coping with the threat of a full eruption of nearby Mount Merapi, which has been spewing lava and toxic gas for weeks. Thousands of villagers have fled their homes. The picture that is emerging is complex and intimidating.

Right now, though, there is little time for speculation.

Members of the unit gather at British Red Cross headquarters: the ERU team leader, an air operations manager, a warehousing specialist, a systems delegate and me.

There's paperwork to be completed, communications equipment to be checked, jabs to be had for those who need them, and a briefing.

The team will be one of the lynchpins of the unfolding aid response, joining a rapid mobilization of at least 10 national Red Cross societies, all coordinated by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Our team will ensure that flights carrying relief goods are coordinated and cleared, that their cargo is promptly offloaded and stored, and that the transport is in place to get it all to the people who need it most - as quickly as possible.

Aid workers are faced with two competing yet massive pressures. On the one hand, the people affected need assistance and they need it now. On the other, the operation has to be organised and implemented in a way that doesn't end up unleashing yet further chaos.

We're all painfully aware that there are villages in the region that have yet to receive help. It's an uncomfortable reality.

At the same time, however, we know that assistance began to reach the victims of this catastrophe within hours of the quake. Thousands of Indonesian Red Cross volunteers got to work immediately, giving out food, medicine and material for shelter.

Now they are to be backed by a rapidly expanding international staff of doctors, nurses, relief experts, water engineers, logisticians and IT specialists.

Perhaps emergency response can never be fast enough, but it's on its way.

Wednesday, May 31

Arriving in Yogyakarta this morning, the first impression was one of curious normality. It's only four days since an earthquake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale ripped through this region, but the parts of the city I see first seem relatively unscathed. About the only visible damage I notice are the tiles missing from roof tops.

But it's not long before the full scale of this emergency becomes apparent.

Drive just half an hour south of the city centre and the devastation begins. Traffic is backed up everywhere, trying to make way for ambulances and police cars, their sirens wailing across the decimated neighbourhoods.

In Bantul district, one of the worst affected areas, between 70 and 90 percent of the houses are destroyed. The rubble is everywhere: ugly, haphazard mounds of concrete and twisted metal. Some buildings have collapsed so completely that what's left of the roof now simply sits at ground level where the pulverized house used to be.

As far as the huge Red Cross response is concerned, shelter is turning into one of the most urgent priorities, and that means tents and tarpaulins. Thousands have been distributed so far. The vast majority of people do not want to leave what's left of their homes, so there are no displaced camps here. They now live next to the remains.

A further pressure is that patients in vastly overstretched hospitals and clinics cannot be discharged unless they have shelter to go to, at the request of the government, which is adding to the challenge of providing tents for those well enough to leave.

And to add to the situation, the monsoon rains have begun.

I find one oasis of relative calm, a field hospital set up by the Indonesian Red Cross backed by an eight-person medical team from the Norwegian Red Cross.

On the night of the earthquake, some 1,500 injured people congregated in a nearby field looking for help, so here's where they decided to put the hospital, which was moved wholesale down from the tsunami operation in Aceh.

As I arrive, the Norwegians are putting up another tent, which will expand the capacity of this hospital from 40 to 60 beds. There is also an operating theatre and about 200 people are receiving out-patient treatment every day.

I get back to the hotel that has been virtually commandeered as Red Cross headquarters for the time being. Doctors and nurses from Singapore, Korea and Hong Kong congregate in the lobby, IT technicians set off to work on the Indonesian Red Cross communications system, water and sanitation delegates prepare for an assessment. The scale of this operation is expanding by the minute.

The British Red Cross logistics team fans out immediately. One of our delegates heads to the airport to get a handle on the incoming flights, another leaves to find a warehouse, and our boss launches into the complex task of coordinating with the many other components of the Red Cross Movement here who will need our logistical support.

This is going to be busy.

Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters.