Quake devastation rivals tsunami chaos
Ground turned to jelly, sinking homes; many peope still missing
PALU, Indonesia — Munif Umayar, a survivor of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the city of Palu, took up a laborious search for his house Wednesday in the ruins of the Balaroa neighborhood. After a long hunt, and hard digging, he finally found it — at least 150 yards from where he guessed he used to live.
That was the power of the earthquake, turning the ground into jelly in a deadly churn that eradicated landmarks and sent buildings flowing sideways even as they were being sucked down into rubble.
“I had to dig hard to know that this was my house,” said Munif, a 50-year-old businessman. “When I found it, I put a flag on it, as a sign.” He fears his brother was trapped inside.
Balaroa is a middle-class collection of housing developments in Palu and it is the center of some of the worst damage from the quake that hit Indonesia on Friday. In the midst of a disaster that killed with both water and earth over a wider stretch of Sulawesi Island — the official toll rose to at least 1,407 dead on Wednesday — Balaroa sustained almost no damage from the ensuing tsunami.
Instead, the neighborhood was laid waste when the earthquake caused a phenomenon known as liquefaction, undermining and destroying at least 1,747 homes in this part of town alone. Balaroa is now a vast wasteland of debris. Rooftops are all that remain of many houses. The minaret of a mosque, leaning precariously to one side, is one of the few structures still standing.
Across Palu and in neighboring areas, many people are still unaccounted for. Officials put the number of missing at 113, but that was only those who had been reported.
An untold number were swept away by the tsunami, especially by the third and final wave that was more than 20 feet high in some places. And many bodies are thought to still be buried under rubble in places like Balaroa. The quake struck at 6:02 p.m. local time, an hour when many would have been at home.
After days of makeshift efforts, heavy equipment was going to work around the city Wednesday, used by military crews to help dig out bodies and clear roads.
The bodies were there, locals knew, because of the smell. As crews dug into the earth in one obliterated corner of Balaroa, a woman’s arm became visible, then her head. Pushing away rebar and concrete, the workers found more: a small child, clutching to her in their last moments.
The neighborhood of Petobo, which like Balaroa was built on soft soil in a low-lying area, was also demolished by liquefaction. At least 744 houses were destroyed there.
All told, 4,413 buildings were said to have collapsed in Palu, and 773 more in the neighboring town of Donggala, said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster management agency.