Shortfall restricts rescue efforts
INDONESIA has appealed for foreign emergency aid as the search for victims of the earthquakes and tsunami that struck Sulawesi island was being hampered by a lack of equipment.
The death toll from Friday’s 7.4-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami yesterday stood at 832, but officials warned it was likely to increase, with Vice President Jusuf Kalla saying casualties could be in the “thousands”.
President Joko Widodo has authorised the acceptance of “international help for urgent disaster response and relief,” said Thomas Lembong, chairman of the National Investment Coordinating Board.
The European Union said it had released an initial €1.5 million ($A2.4 million) in emergency humanitarian assistance, while the United States said it stood “ready to assist in the relief effort”.
Nugroho Budi Wiryanto, operations chief for the National Disaster Search and Rescue Agency, said a lack of heavy equipment and fuel was “making it hard for us to recover victims”.
“Yesterday, communication was still cut off. Hopefully today is good enough and we can be more successful,” he said.
He said search workers had travelled to Donggala district, which remained largely isolated, by boat on Sunday afternoon and had so far recovered eight bodies there.
National Disaster Management Agency spokesman Sutopo Nugroho said emergency power generators had been flown to Palu on military aircraft as the need for electricity became increasingly urgent.
Mr Sutopo said searchers found 13 bodies and two survivors, including a woman from a collapsed seven-storey hotel in Palu.
Workers were still trying to find survivors from a crumbled shopping mall as hopes of finding anyone still alive grew slimmer three days after the earthquake.
Armed forces commander Air Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto said the dead would be buried in a mass grave.
I COULD NOT SAVE MY WIFE. I PICKED UP HER BODY MYSELF. NO ONE HAS COME HERE TO HELP ELDERLY VILLAGE RESIDENT
“We’ll bury them as soon as possible. Let’s hope that it will be done in one or two days,” he said.
Some residents in Palu – the capital of Central Sulawesi province, which was hardesthit by the quake and tsunami – complained about the lack of aid.
“My house moved several metres from the original position. I could not save my wife. I picked up her body myself,” Mahmud, an elderly resident of Balaroa village, told Metro TV.
“No one has come here to help.”
The Sulawesi quakes came after more than 550 people were killed and more than 400,000 were displaced in August in a series of powerful quakes that devastated the Indonesian resort island of Lombok.
Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area known for seismic upheavals and volcanic eruptions.