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Padang, West Sumatra. For the past five days, many families have clung to the hope that their missing loved ones might be pulled alive from the wreckage in Padang. But now, all that most families hope for is that they can find the bodies of their relatives and give them proper burials.

Mardoni, 33, told the Jakarta Globe that he and his family had lost hope that his brother-in-law, Ahmad Yusuf, 27, was still alive. Yusuf is believed to have been trapped under the ruins of the Ambacang Hotel in Padang.

“We started to lose hope three days after the quake,” Mardoni said. “Earlier we were very hopeful. He is more than a brother-in-law to me, he is my brother.”

Mardoni said that since Wednesday night his whole family had waited at the Dr M Djamil Hospital for updates.

“Even my mother-in-law [Yusuf’s mother] has not moved from here, except to eat or buy some clothes in the markets,” he said. “We believe that mother will recognize Yusuf as soon as she sees the body, that is why she has insisted on staying here.”

Yusuf was attending a seminar with an insurance company at the hotel when the quake struck. Mardoni said Yusuf was looking for a second job to support his wife and siblings. He was a teacher at Sitalang 1 state elementary school.

The family had tried to call Yusuf’s mobile phone, but by Friday they couldn’t reach it any longer. That was when they lost hope of seeing Yusuf alive again, Mardoni said.

“His cell phone was on. We had tried to call and send messages, but we received no answers,” he said. “Once I was sure that he was trying to reach his phone to answer it because I could hear some noises.”

“This evacuation process is so slow. You don’t know how it feels. If you are the family of one of the victims trapped in the hotel, all you want to do is break in and search it by yourself,” he said.

“I don’t have any more patience in me. I did try to sneak [in] once but they [the search and rescue officials] stopped me.”

If the evacuation teams were working faster, he said, he would probably still have hope. But with the state of affairs in the ravaged city, he and the family can only pray for a miracle.

Mardoni is disappointed and angry with the government, whichhe says should have learned how to properly rescue people from previous earthquakes.

“I don’t know how many ambulances I’ve run up to, to see whether it’s my brother [inside]. But so far we have had no good news. He is still trapped.”.

Haris, 45, Yusuf’s uncle, said the family is now merely waiting for the corpse. He said that in their hearts, they have let Yusuf go.

“But we need to get his body. He needs to be buried at the cemetary. We want an exact place for him, so that we can come and pray for him in the future,” Haris said.

Likewise, the family of Rajif Novaldi fears that his first day at work in the Adira Finance building in Sawahan was his last day alive.

Rajif’s sister-in-law, Nova Yanti, said that Wednesday was her brother-in-law’s first day at the office.

Rajif applied for a job in the morning and was accepted, and asked to join some briefings that afternoon, when the quake hit.

The family was hopeful when they saw rescuers working rapidly at the collapsed building, she said.

“The evacuation at other buildings was slow, I heard, but at Adira Finance it was different and they worked very fast,” Nova said.

But on Friday night, the family’s hopes were dashed when they learned that nearly all of the people found inside the building were dead.

“Then on Saturday night, my brother-in-law was reported to have been found, but he hadn’t survived. Now we are waiting for his body,” she said. “I don’t know why the identification process takes so long.”