BY
ON THE POROS PALU DONGGALA ROAD, INDONESIA
HUNDREDS of young children have been begging for help in the region hit by the Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami – nine days after the disaster.
The youngsters, including school friends Syafad, six, and Rafad, eight, were holding handmade signs pleading for support, as well as cardboard boxes for drivers on the Indonesian island to put food and other essential items in.
As the death toll increased to 1,763, little Syafad, wearing a yellow T-shirt, yesterday waved a sign at motorists on the main highway, saying “help me”, close to his devastated village of Loli Saluran.
Rafad held a pink sign saying, “A little help from you can help us”. Speaking to the Mirror after we were given permission to talk to them, Rafad said: “My house is broken and all my toys. I’m not able to play outside and I can’t go to school. I don’t know when we will be able to go back.
“People have been giving us food and drinks.” Some of the children along the 46-mile route, most of which has been left flattened by the 18ft waves which swept the island following the 7.5 magnitude quake, were dressed in only pyjamas.
Many are so desperate to get help, they are risking their lives by standing in the middle of the road to try to get drivers on both sides to slow down and stop.
Aid took longer to reach some areas along the route as many parts of it were impassable after the disaster first hit, cutting residents
off from the huge humanitarian relief effort in Palu.
Across the island, an estimated 160,000 homes have been completely destroyed.
It is feared as many as 5,000 people are still missing. Thousands of survivors are sheltering in squalid conditions in tents and in 140-plus official shelters crudely cobbled together from tarpaulin and debris.
They are in desperate need of medicine, food, clean water and safe toilet facilities.
The Red Cross, which has more than 600 staff working to solve the disaster, has now reached Donggala at the other end of the road. Yesterday, a dad told how he was reunited with his daughter after the disaster killed her mum and left her three siblings missing. Security guard Mohamed Yahya Rasledon, 32, discovered his wife Ritna, 36, dead near the beach, but found no sign of his children Suci, 10, Olivia, nine, Rafli, five, and Raska, two. But a woman had scooped up Suci and carried her to safety. Mohamed said: “Now I’m hoping my other children are alive and what happened to Suci gives me hope.”