Across this coastal provincial capital, hardest hit by the latest earthquake to devastate Indonesia, mourners, survivors and rescue workers alike clawed through the rubble.
Some, like Malina Utami, had already realized the worst. She was just looking for the shoes missing from her dead daughter's body, found in the rubble of a four-story school that was flattened within seconds.
As the death toll climbed Thursday - to 1,100 by one UN estimate - others looked for survivors, with thousands of people missing and feared trapped in the wreckage of shattered buildings.
When search efforts were suspended for the night, an eerie quiet fell over the city of 900,000.
"Let's not underestimate. Let's be prepared for the worst," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in the capital, Jakarta.
Wednesday's 7.6-magnitude earthquake started at sea and quickly rippled through Sumatra, the westernmost island in the Indonesian archipelago.
Government figures put the number of dead at 777, with at least 440 people seriously injured. John Holmes, the UN's humanitarian chief, set the death toll at 1,100, and the number was expected to grow.