Indonesia asks for help, buries dead
Medicines running out and rescuers are struggling with a shortage of heavy equipment
PALU, Indonesia: Indonesian volunteers began burying bodies in a mass grave with space for more than a thousand people on Monday, victims of a quaketsunami that devastated swathes of Sulawesi and left authorities struggling to deal with the sheer scale of the disaster.
Indonesia is no stranger to natural calamities and Jakarta had been keen to show it could deal with a catastrophe that has killed at least 844 people, according to the latest official count, and displaced some 48,000 more.
But four days on some remote areas are only now being contacted, medicines are running out and rescuers are struggling with a shortage of heavy equipment as they try to reach desperate victims calling out from the ruins of collapsed buildings.
In response, President Joko Widodo opened the door to the dozens of international aid agencies and NGOs who are lined up to provide life-saving assistance.
“Last night, President @ jokowi authorized us to accept international help for urgent disaster-response & relief,” senior government official Tom Lembong wrote on Twitter on Monday.
Officials fear the toll will rise steeply in the coming days and are preparing for the worst, declaring a 14-day state of emergency.
The UN’s relief agency believes that 191,000 people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, according to an assessment published yesterday.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the figure included around 46,000 children and 14,000 elderly Indonesians, many beyond urban areas that are the focus of government recovery efforts.
Meanwhile, at Poboya – in the hills above the devastated seaside city of Palu – volunteers began to fill a vast grave with the dead, with instructions to prepare for 1,300 victims to be laid to rest.
Authorities are desperate to stave off any disease outbreak caused by decomposing bodies, some now are riddled with maggots.
In Balaroa, a Palu suburb once home to a housing complex, the scale of the damage was obvious. A wasteland of flattened trees, shards of concrete, twisted metal roofing, door frames and mangled furniture stretched out into the distance.
Dazed groups of people ambled over the wreckage, unclear where or how to start digging. Among them were three men looking for their younger brother.
Rescuers are racing against the clock and a lack of equipment to save those still trapped in the rubble, with up to 60 people feared to be underneath one Palu hotel alone.
Two survivors have been plucked from the 80-room Hotel Roa-Roa, Indonesia’s search and rescue agency said, and there could still be more alive.
Desperate survivors turned to looting shops for basics like food, water and fuel as police looked on, unwilling or unable to intervene.
“There has been no aid, we need to eat. We don’t have any other choice, we must get food,” one man in Palu told AFP as he filled a basket with goods from a nearby store.
Many survivors have spent the last days desperately searching for loved ones while dealing with the trauma of the disaster.
One survivor, Adi, was hugging his wife by the beach when the tsunami struck on Friday. He has no idea where she is now, or whether she is alive.
“When the wave came, I lost her,” he said.
“I was carried about 50 metres. I couldn’t hold anything,” he said.
Others have centred their search for loved ones around openair morgues, where the dead lay in the baking sun – waiting to be claimed, waiting to be named.
In other places, the picture was even less clear.
Indonesia’s Metro TV broadcast aerial footage from the southern suburb of Petobo, where the devastation appeared extensive.
According to government estimates there could be up to 700 people killed there alone, with many of the 1,747 homes destroyed. — AFP