Aid pours into disaster-ravaged island
Aid poured into disaster-ravaged Palu after days of delays as efforts ramped up to reach 200,000 people in desperate need following a deadly quake-tsunami in the Indonesian city. Planeloads of food, clean water and other essentials cy at Palu were on Sulawesi landing island, with increasing where a powerful frequenearthquake and a wall of water levelled parts of the region and killed at least 1,763 people, officials said yesterday.
Looters ransacked shops in the aftermath of the disaster more than a week ago, as food and water ran dry and convoys bringing life-saving relief were slow to arrive.
But the trickle of international aid to Palu and local efforts to help the survivors have accelerated in recent days.
Daisy chains of troops unloaded supplies directly onto trucks for distribution to villages around Palu or helicopters for delivery further afield. More than 82,000 military and civilian personnel, as well as volunteers, have descended on the devastated city while Indonesian army choppers are running missions to deliver supplies to remote parts of the region that were previously blocked off by the disaster.
Tonnes of donations from Australia and the United States reached Palu yesterday aboard military aircraft.
A plane chartered by Save the Children also landed with emergency shelter and water purification kits as did another carrying a medical team from South Africa.
Teams of Indonesian Red Cross workers set up warehouses and fanned out to distribute supplies across the region, where the double-punch disaster reduced entire neighbourhoods to rubble.
But relief workers face a monumental task ahead.
The tens of thousands left homeless by the disaster are scattered across Palu and beyond, many squatting outside their ruined homes or bunkered down in makeshift camps and entirely dependent on handouts to survive.