BAWURAN, Indonesia – Help began reaching the victims of the Java earthquake yesterday as the disaster’s official death count rose beyond 5,000. But distribution of the aid was patchy and many went without.

An estimated 200,000 people lost their homes in the weekend’s quake, and throughout the devastated area, south of the city of Yogyakarta, survivors lined the roads, waving cardboard boxes for donations.

The homeless are sleeping in bamboo-and-plastic shelters they have put up themselves. Some larger tents have been provided by the Indonesian government but, without groundsheets, they turn to quagmires in the heavy rains.

“Still need help,” read one hand-painted sign next to rubble of a wrecked house.

At the relief coordination center in Bantul, the worst affected district, boxes of noodles were loaded into trucks for distribution, and large refugee camps handed out supplies.

But the vast majority of survivors have stayed near the wreckage of their homes, making reaching them more difficult.

The official number of dead from Saturday’s dawn quake was put at 5,136 on Sunday night as efforts to recover corpses were wound down.

“I think there are no more, alive or dead,” the relief coordinator for Bantul, Gendot Sudarto, said. “There’s no more people who report that they have lost their family.”

Among the last to be recovered were Nani Harianti, 24, found under a pile of bricks in the village of Bawuran, clutching her 10-month-old son, Noval. The pair was quickly buried.

Bawuran, one of the hardest hit parts of Bantul, was a scene of utter devastation. Barely a house was still standing, and the village was a collection of brick piles and wooden beams.

Among them, the survivors huddled and waited for assistance. But anger at any delay is not the Javanese way.

“It’s normal,” Santoso, 42, said. “A lot of people are suffering, so we just wait. If they give it’s a blessing, but if they don’t we understand.”

In Beji Sumbaragung, where eight houses were intact and 400 people homeless, Sihono, 52, supervised the erection of a bamboo and tarpaulin shelter.

“We haven’t got any help from anyone,” he said. “We did ask the government, but until now we haven’t got it.”

Nonetheless, he smiled broadly as he related the loss of two sisters-in-law and another relative.

“What can we do? It’s not our will,” he explained. “As a Christian, I believe everything is good in its time. It’s still a blessing for me that me and others didn’t die.”

President Yudhoyono of Indonesia, who has moved his office to Yogyakarta to supervise relief operations, took a less philosophical view.

“We have to improve coordination,” he said. “I saw in many areas that there are many things that need to be speeded up. We don’t want any assistance to miss the target – not even a kilogram of rice.”

More international aid began to arrive yesterday with a Unicef airlift bringing in water tanks, tents, and tarpaulins, and the World Food Program providing 30 tons of fortified biscuits, enough to feed 20,000 people for a week.

The International Medical Corps is setting up two tented clinics and several mobile teams to treat illness among the survivors, which the existing, overwhelmed health system can no longer cope with.

Its Indonesia country director, Rae McGrath – who founded the British-based Mines Advisory Group – said the relief effort was going well under the circumstances and the impact of the disaster should not be underestimated.

“If you are unfortunate enough to have an earthquake 18 months after a tsunami, people are going to say this is very small,” he said. “For those people there this is just as bad. Individual villages have lost hundreds of people.”

“I have heard a lot about compassion fatigue, but as far as I’m concerned it means nothing. I have never seen it. People respond to what they see and the situation.”