Counting cost of quake

A week after a major earthquake brought devastation to Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, Hasnah has trouble remembering all of the dead relatives she’s trying to find in the tangled expanse of mud and debris that used to be her neighbourhood.

Hasnah, 44, is from Petobo, a village on the southern outskirts of the city of Palu, where last Friday’s 7.5 magnitude earthquake triggered a phenomenon called soil liquefaction, which turned the ground into a churning sea of mud.

“More than half of my family are gone,” Hasnah told reporters as she sobbed. “I can’t even count how many. Two of my children are gone, my cousins, my sister, my brother-in-law and children, all gone.”

The official death toll from the quake and tsunami it triggered stands at 1,558, but it will certainly rise as more bodies are recovered in Palu, where most of the dead have been counted.

Figures for more remote areas, some still cut off by destroyed roads and landslides, are only trickling in, if their at all.

No one knows how many people were dragged to their deaths in the roiling quagmire in Petobo and nearby areas south of Palu, which were particularly hard hit by liquefaction.

The national disaster agency says 1,700 homes in one neighbourhood alone were swallowed up and hundreds of people killed.

“I saw our homes being sucked into the earth. The earth was like a blender, blending everything in its way,” said Hasnah.

The first signs of recovery are evident in Palu. Electricity has been restored and some shops and banks have reopened and aid and fuel are arriving.

I saw our homes being sucked into the earth. The earth was like a blender, blending everything in its way