Survivors complain of shortages as they begin to leave town hit by deadly quake
Indonesia officials facing criticism
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Survivors were leaving the disaster-hit region of central Sulawesi on Thursday out of frustration with what they said was the slow provision of assistance from the Indonesian government and aid agencies in the week following a 7.5-magnitude earthquake and tsunami.
Widely reported shortages of food, water, gasoline and other necessities have led to looting of damaged shops and supermarkets in Palu, the town of 380,000 near the quake’s epicenter.
But even then, with relief slow to arrive on damaged roads and ground that had churned into mud, residents said there isn’t enough food and water for the thousands of injured and 70,000 left homeless.
“The last I heard, my brother was picking up my mother and father in Palu to evacuate to another district,” said Imade Boby, a Jakarta resident whose parents and relatives live in Palu.
“The communications are bad. It is hard to keep up to date,” Mr. Boby added, expressing relief that his family survived the disaster.
Officials said Thursday that 1,424 people had died in the quake and an ensuing tsunami that reached as high as 20 feet and crashed over coastal parts of central Sulawesi, which sits almost 1,000 miles east of the capital, Jakarta.
Hundreds have been buried this week in mass funerals to reduce the risk of disease spreading. Thousands have been evacuated by sea, Supoto Purwo Nugroho, the national disaster agency spokesman, told reporters in Jakarta.
Despite promises of relief and the Indonesian government’s acceptance of international assistance, emergency crews were still struggling to reach areas cut off by debris and damaged roads.
The aid effort so far has been concentrated in Palu, which has an airport where military flights have been able to deliver some relief. But getting supplies to outlying areas, or bringing in excavators and other heavy equipment to assist in digging through debris, has proven more difficult and contributed to survivors’ frustration.
“The road access is not easy at all, many are cracked or blocked by trees, power lines, parts of buildings.” said Husni, community engagement coordinator for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Like a number of Indonesians, Husni goes by one name.
The challenges for aid workers are compounded by Indonesia’s geography: its 17,000 islands stretch around the same distance as from Alaska to New York and sit on an area of heavy tectonic activity known as the Ring of Fire, which sees frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
On Wednesday, a volcano called Mt. Soputan spewed ash 13,000 feet into the skies above central Sulawesi. Although the eruption was not deemed a threat to either the disaster-hit areas around Palu, or to aircraft attempting to bring more aid to the island, it highlighted the challenges of getting urgent help to remote regions of the archipelago.
An aid ship dispatched Sunday from Jakarta took until Thursday to reach Makassar, the biggest city on Sulawesi. The cargo including much-needed food and medical equipment would take “probably another 24 hours” to be brought by road to Palu, Husni said.
In recent days, Red Cross teams have fanned out to areas outside Palu, where grim accounts of the devastation underlined officials’ warnings that the death toll would continue to rise as damage in those areas was fully assessed.
Balaroa, a village of about 2,000 people, “was really flattened,” Husni said. Satellite maps and aerial footage captured since the quake show little more than bare earth where hundreds of houses stood before last Friday evening.
It was one of several locations that suffered a quake-related phenomenon known as liquefaction, which turns solid earth into a churning mire that swallows up buildings and anything else on the surface, or spins structures hundreds of yards from their original location.
“Community leaders I spoke to don’t know how many people were buried” in Balaroa, Husni said. “Some say maybe 50 percent of the people.”
Husni described meeting survivors who said a funeral had been taking place at the bottom of a hill as the earthquake hit. In the landslide, unknown numbers of people were buried even as they were paying their last respects to a loved one, he said.
“The quake sent soil from the top down,” Husni said. “They are not sure how many are buried.”