Death toll rises in Indonesia quake

1,407 dead; recovery efforts pick up as outside aid arrives

PALU, Indonesia — The power of the earthquake turned 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.

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. 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.

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.

Recovery efforts were picking up Wednesday as more goods became available and shopkeepers felt safe enough to reopen small stores and market stalls.

For many, days of focus on basic survival appeared to be shifting toward efforts to restore some semblance of normal life in a ruined city.

Assistance from other countries also was beginning to arrive, including from Singapore, Japan, South Korea and Britain.

Outside Palu, along the main road through the district of Donggala, houses on the seaward side had been smashed by the tsunami and houses on the inland side destroyed by the quake. Residents complained that aid was not being distributed fairly, with much of it going to Palu instead of outlying areas.