Death toll in Indonesia ‘may reach thousands’
Just 34 minutes after the latest major earthquake to strike Indonesia, officials called off a tsunami warning. Aid agencies and others - still dealing with the aftermath of a devastating quake in August - breathed a sigh of relief.
What they didn’t know was, just about that same time, a 3-metre wall of seawater was tearing through the city of Palu.
Amid the roar of onrushing sea and terrified cries for help, the tsunami tore homes off their foundations, snapped palm trees and dragged away victims - some preparing for a beach festival. Bodies were later left on sands as the waters receded, and some were dragged out to sea.
More than 420 died in Palu alone, officials said yesterday as they began to take stock of the devastation and count the dead amid fears the tally could rise significantly from the 7.5 magnitude quake and the tsunami that churned over parts of Sulawesi, about 1900km northwest of Jakarta. Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla, in an interview with local media, said the death toll could reach well into the thousands.
Among the dead was a young Indonesian air traffic controller who stayed at his post when the earthquake hit to ensure that a plane carrying hundreds of passengers took off safely. He jumped from the tower and died before a medical helicopter could reach him.
Elsewhere, rescue teams confronted washed out roads and bridges as they tried to reach another city, Donggala, and other areas completely cut off by the quake and tsunami.
Indonesian officials also may face another reckoning over why the tsunami alerts were pulled even as a disaster was roaring ashore, raising questions about the level of monitoring and postquake analysis in a nation along some of the world’s most active fault lines.
"People were still going about their activities on the beach, and did not immediately run," said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency, who said that hundreds were gathered in Palu for a beach party. The number of deaths, he said, will "continue to rise as the search continues."
Indonesian officials and aid agencies struggled with battered communications, destroyed roads and landslides. Even aid deliveries by sea have been a challenge since Palu’s port was badly damaged by the tsunami.
The second badly-hit city, Donggala, remained inaccessible after a main bridge collapsed.
"We’re now getting limited communications about the destruction in Palu city, but we have heard nothing from Donggala and this is extremely worrying," the Red Cross said in a statement. "There are more than 300,000 people living there. This is already a tragedy, but it could get much worse."
Rescue officials will now have to deal with the impact of the second major earthquake in Indonesia in two months.
In August, a 6.9 earthquake and a series of strong aftershocks hit the island of Lombok, south of Sulawesi, killing more than 450 people. World Vision, a relief agency, planned to send assessment teams to Palu but still had many of their staff in Lombok responding to the destruction and widespread loss of homes there.
"Our own staff have been affected and their own homes damaged. We are deploying in teams but at this stage communications with Palu, on the island of Sulawesi, is extremely challenging so we, like others, are grappling with understanding the full impact of this disaster," said the aid agency’s national director in Indonesia, Doseba Sinay.
‘‘This is already a tragedy, but it could get much worse.’’ Red Cross statement