Bodies in streets
Teams of rescuers scrambling to reach hardest-hit central Indonesian island
Scores of people were killed when a tsunami and strong earthquakes brought down several buildings and sent locals fleeing for higher ground.
Rescuers were yesterday scrambling to reach tsunami-hit central Indonesia and assess the damage after at least 384 people were killed.
But the death toll is still unclear. An Indonesian official said there were “many victims”.
One of the quakes triggered a 3m-high tsunami that swept away houses in at least two cities on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said 384 people have died in the hard-hit city of Palu alone, Indonesian TV reported.
Nugroho said the tsunami hit Palu, the capital of central Sulawesi province, as well as the smaller city of Donggala and several other coastal settlements on Friday.
Photographs from Palu, home to about 350,000 on the coast of Sulawesi island, showed partially covered bodies on the ground near the shore, the morning after tsunami waves hit the city.
Indonesia’s geophysics agency confirmed the tsunami occurred after it originally called off its tsunami warning.
Indonesian TV showed a smartphone video of a powerful wave hitting Palu, with people screaming and running in fear.
The footage purportedly shows a number of small restaurants near the Palu Grand Mall swept away by the wave, which some have referred to as a tsunami online.
The water smashed into buildings and a large mosque collapsed under the force.
Houses were swept away and families were reported missing, Nugroho said, adding communications and power to the area were disrupted. The main airport in Palu was expected to stay closed for at least 24 hours.
The region was rocked by a magnitude 7.5 earthquake and numerous strong aftershocks, including one of magnitude 6.7.
An earlier magnitude 6.1 quake in central Sulawesi killed several people, injured 10 and damaged dozens of houses.
The strongest of two major quakes was centred at a depth of 10km about 56km northeast of the central Sulawesi town of Donggala.
The chief of the meteorology and geophysics agency, Dwikorita Karnawati, said the tsunami warning triggered by the biggest quake, in place for about half an hour, was lifted after the tsunami was over.
Nugroho said the military was deploying troops to Palu and Donggala.
The national police were also mobilising to help the emergency response, along with personnel from the search-and-rescue and disaster agencies.
“People are encouraged to remain vigilant,” Sutopo said. “It is better not to be in a house or building because the potential for aftershocks can be dangerous. People are encouraged to gather in safe areas. Avoid the slopes of hills.”
Mirza Arisam, a resident of Kendari, the capital of neighbouring Southeast Sulawesi, said his uncle and his family of five, including three children, were on vacation in Palu and he has been unable to contact them since the tsunami hit.
An official with the local disaster agency, Akris, said “many houses have collapsed.”
“It happened while we still have difficulties in collecting data from nine villages affected by the first quake,” he told AP..
“People ran out in panic.” Women and children wailed hysterically in a video distributed by the disaster agency, which also released a photo showing a heavily damaged department store.
In December 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra in western Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries.