Over 800 dead after Indonesia quake, tsunami
JAKARTA — The death toll from twin disasters on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, a major earthquake and the tsunami that followed, jumped to more than 800 on Sunday as rescue workers were only just starting to take stock of the wreckage — pulling out survivors buried under the rubble from a collapsed hotel, treating patients in tents and racing to get food and water to survivors.
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman of Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency, said in a news conference Sunday that most of the deaths were in the badly hit city of Palu, with just 11 deaths
reported so far from the town of Donggala. Rescuers have been trickling into Palu, but Donggala and some of the surrounding regions remain largely cut off, with poor communications.
Officials continue to fear the worst and have braced for a fast-climbing death toll — which had more than doubled from Sunday morning — that could eventually be in the thousands.
“The death is believed to be still increasing since many bodies were still under the wreckage while many have not able to be reached,” Mr. Nugroho said. Photos on his Twitter page show bodies lined up in body bags, as police begin the grim task of identifying them and reporting the deaths to families.
The dead, he said, either drowned when the tsunami hit or were killed by collapsed buildings and rubble. Victims are being buried in mass graves, but all victims will later be “buried properly,” Mr. Nugroho said.
A 7.5-magnitude earthquake triggered a massive tsunami on Friday evening, which crashed into Palu, Donggala and the surrounding settlements. Officials on Sunday shared chilling videos and photos on social media of land “liquefaction” in the wake of the disaster, where the soil turns into something akin to quicksand and drags buildings along with it.
In Palu city, rescue teams were evacuating almost 50 people trapped in the ruins of the Roa-Roa Hotel, a 50room, eight-story hotel that collapsed after the earthquake. Several were pulled out alive, and rescuers could hear the screams and cries of others throughout the night, and lights shining from cell phones underneath the rubble — but the cries for help were no longer heard by Sunday afternoon, The Associated Press reported. A correspondent for a local newspaper said on his Facebook page that at least three other hotels with guests in it have also collapsed. Heavy equipment able to move rubble was on its way to the city.
At the same time, a little boy was delivered to police after having been plucked from a Palu sewer. Also, rescuers Sunday freed a woman who had been pinned under rubble for two days with the body of her mother next to her.
Traumatized victims, many of whom were sleeping in tents and being treated for injuries outside their homes, continued to be shaken by aftershocks. At least 200 have hit the area since the quake, according to local officials.
Whenever there are aftershocks, people have “become panicked, running away with some yelling ‘Tsunami!’” said Radika Pinto, World Vision’s Area Manager in Palu.
Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo toured Palu on Sunday and said rescuers were having difficulty reaching victims because of a shortage of heavy equipment.
Hungry survivors have been looting unstable shopping centers for food, clothing and water. Adding to the chaos, local media has reported that a prison wall collapsed, setting free hundreds of prisoners inside.
The Head of Palu Penitentiary, Adhi Yan Ricoh, told Indonesian magazine Tempo there were 560 inmates at the prison and more than half escaped.
“At that time, the electricity went out, and there were only a few officers. Moreover, they also panicked and tried to save themselves,” Mr. Adhi said.
Mr. Nugroho, the disaster agency’s spokesman, said a Hercules C-130 plane was deployed to the area to evacuate the hordes of people racing to get out of the city. Water, he added, was an urgent need.
“The water turned turbid, and cannot be consumed. Clean water is an urgent need for the people of Palu,” he said.
Thousands of homes, hotels, shopping centers, hospitals and other public facilities were damaged, Mr. Nugroho said. Hospital patients in Palu are being treated outside the building to avoid the danger of potential aftershocks.
International relief agencies were just starting to reach the area on Sunday, after hourslong overnight drives through landslideprone areas and badly damaged roads. Dozens of calls made to residents and hotels in Palu were unsuccessful, an indication that widespread communications outages continue there.
Even as relief efforts were underway, the focus remained on why none of the area’s residents seemed to be warned of the impending disaster, and a tsunami alert that was quickly dropped by the Indonesian geophysics agency. The high number of casualties, Mr. Nugroho admitted, was caused by limited early warnings, a lack of knowledge of the impending devastation and “limited shelter and spatial planning.”
“There is no sound of siren [or] sign of the tsunami. Many people don’t know the threat [of the tsunami], so they are still doing activities on the beach,” he said, including hundreds gathered there for a beach festival.