INDONESIA GRIPPED BY TALE OF HEROISM AMID QUAKE HORROR
▶ As a mass grave is prepared for 1,300 potential victims, young air traffic controller who died guiding plane to safety is honoured
When the wave came I lost my wife. I was carried about 50 metres. I could not hold on to anything ADI Survivor
It was too late for Indonesian air traffic controller Anthonius Gunawan Agung to escape when the 7.5-magnitude quake and tsunami hit Palu on Friday.
Mr Agung, 21, was on duty in the control tower of Sulawesi’s Mutiara SIS Al Jufrie airport when the first quakes hit, jolting the island into a state of panic – but not him.
The young controller stayed at his post to guide a passenger jet safely off the ground.
When the largest tremor struck, the roof of the four-storey tower collapsed, forcing Mr Agung to jump from a window, breaking a leg, several ribs and suffering other internal injuries. He died in hospital soon after.
“When the quake happened, he was giving clearance to Batik Air to take off and waited for the plane to be safely airborne before finally leaving the ATC cabin tower,” AirNav Indonesia spokesman Yohanes Harry Sirait said.
On Saturday, amid the death and devastation, Mr Agung was hailed as a hero and his body was flown to his home town of Makassar in South Sulawesi.
The pilot of the Batik Air flight guided to safety by the young controller described Mr Agung as a “guardian angel”.
“‘Batik 6231 runway 33 clear for take off’ were his last words,” the pilot wrote on Instagram.
Indonesian authorities are struggling to deal with the scale of the disaster that hit the archipelago on Friday.
The death toll is 832 but officials fear this will rise steeply in the coming days and are preparing for the worst, declaring a 14-day state of emergency.
Indonesia is no stranger to natural disasters and Jakarta wants to show it can deal with such a catastrophe.
But four days on, contact has still not been made with some remote areas, medicine is running out and rescuers are struggling with a shortage of heavy equipment as they try to reach survivors calling from under collapsed buildings.
President Joko Widodo on Sunday opened the door to international aid agencies and charities.
Now the world is beginning to receive a clearer picture of the Indonesia’s devastation. Neighbourhoods were turned into wastelands of flattened trees, shards of concrete and twisted metal roofing.
At Poboya, in the hills above the devastated seaside city of Palu, volunteers began to fill a vast grave with the dead. They have instructions to prepare for 1,300 victims to be buried there.
The authorities want to stop any outbreak of disease caused by decomposing bodies.
Three trucks arrived stacked with corpses wrapped in orange, yellow and black bags. One by one they were dragged into the grave as excavators poured soil on top.
In the Palu suburb of Balaroa, dazed groups of survivors staggered over the wreckage, unclear of where or how to start digging.
Rescuers are racing against the clock and struggling with a shortage of equipment to save those trapped, with about 60 people feared to be under the rubble of one Palu hotel.
Desperate survivors looted shops for food, water and fuel as police looked on, unwilling or unable to intervene.
“There has been no aid, we need to eat,” one man in Palu told AFP as he filled a basket with goods from a shop. “We don’t have any other choice, we must get food.”
Meanwhile, Indonesian government officials said 1,200 inmates were able to break out of three prisons in the region.
“I’m sure they escaped because they feared they would be affected by the earthquake,” Ministry of Justice official Sri Puguh Utami said. “This is a matter of life and death for the prisoners.”
Many survivors spent the past days searching for loved ones while dealing with the trauma of the disaster.
Adi was hugging his wife by the beach when the tsunami struck on Friday. He has no idea where she is now or whether she is alive.
“When the wave came, I lost her,” Adi said. “I was carried about 50 metres. I couldn’t hold anything.”
Others have focused their search for loved ones around open-air morgues where the dead lie in the baking sun, waiting to be claimed.
As dire as the situation in Palu is, it was — at least — clear. In outlying areas, the fate of thousands is still unknown.
Charities gave a warning that the wrecked infrastructure was slowing down rescue work.
The local airport was cleared to receive humanitarian and commercial flights, but so far the landing slots have been taken up by Indonesia’s military, which is carrying out its own assistance work.
Satellite imagery showed severe damage at some of the area’s major ports, with ships forced on to land, quays and bridges smashed and shipping containers thrown around.
A double-arched yellow bridge had collapsed, as cars bobbed in the water below.
Indonesia, home to 260 million people, is one of the world’s most disaster-prone nations.
It lies on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and many of the world’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.
On December 26, 2004, an earthquake triggered a massive Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 220,000 people throughout the region, including 168,000 in Indonesia.