Hunt for bodies in Indonesia reveals multiple tragedies under sea of mud

THE bodies of a mother and her six-week-old baby were among the latest to be discovered yesterday under a sea of mud in Indonesia, one week after a major earthquake and tsunami wreaked devastation on the islands.

Husnul Hidayat was found clutching her daughter, Aisah, to her chest after her home in the Petobo neighbourhood of Sulawesi island was completely wiped out. Her brother, Ichsan Hidayat, said his sister and niece “deserved better”. He said: “I prayed that they are in a better place.”

As the death toll rose to 1,649 more than a week after the major earthquake hit, rescuers workers were focusing yesterday on what looks sure to be a long, difficult search for bodies, many buried in morasses of debris and mud.

No one knows how many people were dragged to their deaths when the quake triggered soil liquefaction, a phenomenon that turns the ground into a quagmire. Communities in the south of Palu were particularly hard hit — 1,700 homes in one neighbourhood alone were swallowed up.

Many hundreds of people are now entombed in slowly drying mud churned with heaps of debris and vehicles.

In the Balaroa neighbourhood of Palu, rescuers found 34 bodies yesterday, and laid them out in a row of blue and orange bags — among them 10-year-old Dede Aulianisa.

Her parents recognised her from the clothes she was wearing when the quake struck.

“I’m certain it’s her. She was wearing the exact scout uniform, with a sweater with the words ‘Geng 97’,” said her father, Anwar, who like many Indonesian goes by only one name.

“When the land split, she happened to be on the side that collapsed,” he said. “She was such a happy child. Very intelligent. Her teachers loved her and she had many friends,” he sighed.

Hasnah, 44, also a resident of Petobo, has trouble remembering all the relatives she is trying to find in the expanse of mud and debris.

“More than half of my family are gone,” Hasnah said, sobbing. “I can’t even count how many. Two of my children are gone, my cousins, my sister, my brother-in-law and their children. All gone.”

Homes were torn apart, shunted hundreds of metres and sucked into the ground which liquefied when the 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck. Some 70,000 people have been left homeless.

“The earth was like a blender, blending everything in its way,” said Hasnah. She said she has enough food and water — but she’s furious that a search and rescue operation in her area only began on Thursday.

“They said they would come with the heavy machines but they didn’t,” she said. “They lied.”

Tired of waiting for help, villagers themselves have been searching, Hasnah said. “We’ve marked the possible bodies with sticks. You can see a foot sticking out, but there’s no one here to dig them out.”

Doctors have been flocking to help from other parts of Indonesia. One local hospital in Budi Agung has 134 beds with about 20 more set up in a tent outside — all are full. A hospital ship is also due to arrive. Doctors said many patients have been at high risk of infection because they were buried in mud.

With the death toll predicted to rise, the UN is seeking $50.5m (€44m) for “immediate relief” to help 191,000 survivors. Government and international aid has now started to slowly filter through.

The recovery effort from the twin disasters of earthquake and tsunami is expected to take two years, the country’s vice-president warned yesterday. Jusuf Kalla said that the relief efforts would begin with a two-month emergency response phase when everyone who lost their house would get temporary shelter.