Tsunami deaths soar past 1 200

President calls for reinforcements as desperate search for survivors continues

TRUCKS carrying food for desperate survivors of the earthquake on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island rolled in with a police escort yesterday to guard against looters, while the death toll from the disaster soared past 1 200.

Four days after the magnitude 7.5 earthquake and tsunami struck, supplies of food, water, fuel and medicine had yet to reach the hardest-hit areas outside Palu, the largest city that was heavily damaged. Many roads in the earthquake zone are blocked and communications lines are down.

“We feel like we are stepchildren because all the help is going to Palu,” said Mohamad Taufik, 38, from the town of Donggala, where five of his relatives are still missing. “Many young children here are hungry and sick, but there is no milk or medicine.”

The death toll reached 1 234, national disaster agency spokesperson Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said in Jakarta, the capital. Hundreds were injured, and scores of uncounted bodies could still be buried in collapsed buildings.

More than 25 countries have offered assistance after Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo appealed for international help. But little of that has reached the disaster zone. |

INDONESIAN President Joko Widodo called for reinforcements in a desperate search for survivors of a devastating earthquake and tsunami on Sulawesi island, as the official death toll rose above 1200 yesterday and looting fuelled fears of lawlessness.

Officials fear the toll could soar, as most of the confirmed dead had come from Palu, a small city 1500km north-east of Jakarta, while some remote areas have been cut off since Friday’s 7.5 magnitude quake-triggered tsunami waves.

“There are some main priorities that we must tackle, and the first is to evacuate, find and save victims who’ve not yet been found,” Widodo told a government meeting to co-ordinate disaster recovery efforts on the west coast of Sulawesi.

He said he had ordered the national search and rescue agency to send more police and soldiers into the affected districts, some cut off by destroyed roads, landslides and downed bridges.

The official death toll surged to 1 234, the national disaster agency said. Nearly 800 were seriously injured.

The Red Cross said the situation was “nightmarish”, and reports from its workers venturing into one cut-off area, Donggala, a region of 300000 people north of Palu and close to the epicentre, indicated it had been hit “extremely hard”.

A video of Donggala, broadcast by the Antara state news agency, showed widespread destruction, including flattened buildings and a ship that had been hurled into port buildings by the tsunami.

“What we need is food, water, medicine, but up to now we’ve got nothing,” said an unidentified man standing in ruins.

Four badly hit districts of Sulawesi, one of the archipelago nation’s five main islands, have a combined population of about 1.4 million.

In Palu, tsunami waves as high as 6m smashed into the beachfront, while hotels and shopping malls collapsed in ruins. Some neighbourhoods were swallowed up by ground liquefaction, which happens when soil shaken by an earthquake behaves like a liquid.

About 1700 houses in one neighbourhood had disappeared beneath the mud, with hundreds of people believed buried, the national disaster agency said.

Before-and-after satellite pictures show a largely built-up neighbourhood just south of Palu’s airport seemingly wiped clean of all signs of life by liquefaction. Among those killed were 34 children at a Christian Bible study camp, a Red Cross official said.

More than 65 000 homes were damaged and more than 60000 people have been displaced and are in need of emergency help.

Thousands of people have been streaming out of stricken areas. Commercial airlines have struggled to restore operations at Palu’s damaged airport, but military aircraft have taken some survivors out. Many more want to leave.

Authorities have said a navy vessel capable of taking 1 000 people at a time would help with evacuation.

The government has ordered aid supplies to be airlifted in, but there’s little sign of help on Palu’s shattered streets, and survivors appeared increasingly desperate.

A news team saw a shop cleared by about 100 people, shouting, scrambling and fighting each other for items including clothes, toiletries, blankets and water.

At least 20 police were at the scene but did not intervene. The government has played down fears of looting, saying disaster victims could take essential goods, and shops would be compensated later. |