INDONESIA STEPS UP RESCUE EFFORTS
Official death toll surges to 1,234, nearly 800 seriously injured
PRESIDENT Joko Widodo called for reinforcements in a desperate search for survivors of a devastating earthquake and tsunami on Sulawesi island, as the official death toll rose above 1,200 yesterday.
Officials feared the toll could soar, as most of the confirmed dead had come from Palu, a small city 1,500km northeast of Jakarta, while some remote areas have been cut off since Friday’s 7.5magnitude quake triggered tsunami waves.
“There are some main priorities that we must tackle and the first is to evacuate, find and save victims who’ve not yet been found,” Widodo told a government meeting to coordinate disaster recovery efforts on the west coast of Sulawesi.
He said he had ordered the national search-and-rescue agency to send more police and soldiers into the affected districts, some cut off by destroyed roads, landslides and downed bridges.
The official death toll surged to 1,234, the national disaster agency said. Nearly 800 were seriously injured.
The Red Cross said the situation was “nightmarish” and reports from its workers venturing into one cut-off area, Donggala, a region of 300,000 people north of Palu and close to the epicentre, indicated it had been hit “extremely hard”.
A video of Donggala, broadcast by the Antara state news agency, showed widespread destruction, including flattened buildings and a ship that had been hurled into port buildings by the tsunami.
“What we need is food, water, medicine, but to up now, we’ve got nothing,” said an unidentified man standing in ruins.
Four badly hit districts of Sulawesi, one of the archipelago nations five main islands, have a population of about 1.4 million.
More than 65,000 homes were damaged and more than 60,000 people have been displaced and are in need of emergency help.
Thousands of people have been streaming out of stricken areas. Commercial airlines have struggled to restore operations at Palu’s damaged airport, but military aircraft have taken some survivors out. Many more want to leave.
Authorities have said a navy vessel capable of taking 1,000 people at a time would help with the evacuation.
The government has ordered aid supplies to be airlifted in, but there’s little sign of help on Palu’s shattered streets and survivors appeared increasingly desperate.