Desperation and despair in town buried by tsunami
As night fell on the road to Palu drivers of the aid lorries faced a dreadful dilemma: press on and risk being looted by the desperate victims of the Indonesian earthquake and tsunami or sit tight and wait for daybreak. With no street lights to illuminate the winding coast road and local television showing scenes of rising frustration among the survivors of Friday’s 7.5-magnitude earthquake, the police advice was clear: stay put.
And with the tropical sun sinking fast, the news that more than 1,000 criminals had escaped from local jails after the earthquake did nothing to settle the nerves.
“I’m too scared to go on tonight. I just want to help people. I don’t want to be a victim of looters,” said one driver, who was in a convoy carrying water and five tons of donated rice.
In the sapping 90F (32C) heat, the grinding 18-hour drive to Pasangkayu, a town two hours from Palu, gave little inkling of the disaster zone that lay ahead.
From time to time, a sharp bend in the road would reveal glimpses of the azure coastal waters that the quake had rucked up into a 20ft (6m) high tsunami that hit Palu and the nearby town of Donggala. Last night the official death toll had risen to more than 1,300.
As we drove, passing small fishing villages with their houses on stilts, it became clear that we would not reach Palu by nightfall, so we joined the lorries backed up at Pasangkayu, waiting for a police escort.
A police officer confirmed that there was trouble ahead, with survivors erecting improvised roadblocks to stop trucks and empty them of their cargo. In one Facebook post that went viral, a crowd is seen looting goods from a lorry as police look on helplessly.
“They’re just desperate for food. The drivers feel sorry for them,” said the officer, stressing that there had been no violence and that people were only seeking basic supplies.
The disaster, which appears to have overwhelmed the resources of the Indonesian government, left survivors desperate for water and fuel.
The nearest petrol stations were in Pasangkayu, where last night cars queued for several miles at each of the available stations.
Under cover of darkness locals also filled up jerry cans at black market stalls where prices had increased eightfold, from 33p a litre to more than £2.56.
Tarpaulin tents line the road on the approach to Donggala. Entire villages been displaced, their homes destroyed by the earthquake. People have sought shelter in the open and on high ground, afraid of collapsing buildings and another tsunami.
About 50 people from the destroyed village of Towale have gathered on a hillside at the entrance to the town. They told The Telegraph they had no supplies and survived by boiling water from a river over a mile away.
Gde Wiga, a security guard, said motorbike spotters told them when aid convoys were coming so that they could stop them to beg for food. “We just take what we need and no more,” he said.
Behind Mr Gde sat a young couple who were not only struggling to survive but also struggling to cope with the trauma of losing their baby to the tsunami. “My 10-month-old son Kanza was ripped from my wife’s arms by the force of the wave,” said Adi, 27, as his wife Waheda, 23, buried her head in his shoulder for comfort.
In Palu itself, the stories of the dead showed just how quickly the earthquake and ensuing tsunami had enveloped the victims. One rescuer, who spent two days helping to dig out survivors and the dead from a sea of sludge, told how he had found his father and sister locked in an embrace as they were suffocated.
“I could see my father still embracing my sister,” Edi Setiawan told the Associated Press, recalling the moment that hopes of finding his loved ones alive turned to mourning. “I just cried,” he added. “I was able to save other people but I was unable to save my own family.”
Most of the dead were killed by falling debris or the tsunami, but Mr Setiawan’s family were entombed in their home by another deadly phenomenon known as liquefaction, in which loose soil shaken by an
‘I’m too scared to go on tonight. I just want to help people. I don’t want to be a victim of looters’
‘My 10-monthold son was ripped from my wife’s arms by the force of the wave’
‘We’re still finding people in the rubble. Lots of areas still have not been reached. There’s a lot of work to do’
earthquake gives way and collapses.
Hundreds of residents in the family’s Petobo neighbourhood had been buried in the thick mud, said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the country’s disaster agency spokesman.
Dozens of schoolchildren are believed to have met a similar fate at a church in the nearby district of Sigi, where 86 high school students from a Christian school were attending a Bible course.
Thirty-four bodies have been recovered from the site. “They were found floating in the mud,” said Aulia Arriani, a spokesman for the Indonesian Red Cross. “We’re still doing search and rescue. We’re still finding people in the rubble. Lots of areas still have not been reached. There’s a lot of work to do.”
A Red Cross mobile clinic in Sigi was inundated with “people with bruises, open wounds and waterborne diseases like diarrhoea and stomach pains. Mothers are coming in with children who need baby formula,” Ms van Deinse said.
Save the Children has warned that 1.5 million people have been affected by the disaster, including at least 600,000 children.
Palu’s remote location and earthquake damage to the airport tower and runway has meant that aid agencies are struggling to provide vital supplies to those who need it most.
Commercial flights have been temporarily suspended after thousands of frantic survivors stormed the airport on Monday trying to board military aircraft or get seats on the limited number of small local airlines operating.
Roads to the south of the island are open but fuel has run out, leaving residents trapped, sleeping outside their flattened homes and scavenging for food. More than 25 countries have offered assistance, including Britain, the US and China.
The Ministry of Defence is assisting with the relief operation. A Royal Navy frigate has been sent to the area and an Airbus A400M Atlas transport aircraft is being prepared in the UK.
Two foreigners in the area remain unaccounted for – one from South Korea and the other from Belgium.
Three ships carrying Red Cross relief packages will arrive in Sulawesi on Friday but they must dock in the southern port of Makassar before lorries take the tortuously slow and winding road north for at least 20 hours. In the villages dotted along the route, fundraising events have sprung up, and teenagers line the pavements with buckets, seeking charitable donations. “Pray for Donggala” banners hang by the roadside.
Donggala, a town of 300,000 people, is of particular concern – it was close to the epicentre of the quake and only a few aid workers have managed to reach it.
Yesterday, desperation for basic foodstuffs, clean water, medicine and shelter exploded into anger as residents begged Joko Widodo, the Indonesian president, to help them as they crawled into stores and grabbed boxes of food. With desperation rising, there was nothing to do but settle in for the night and wait for the first police escort out of town, unhappy in the knowledge that hundreds of thousands of survivors were out there, still waiting.