Rescuers work through aftershocks to try to reach survivors of quake and tsunami on Indonesian island
Rescuers in Indonesia were last night scrambling to reach trapped victims screaming for help from collapsed buildings, while looters risked entering an unstable shopping mall to grab whatever they could find after a massive earthquake spawned a tsunami that left more than 800 dead.
Muhammad Syaugi, the head of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, said that he could hear people calling out from the collapsed eight-storey Roa-Roa Hotel in the hard-hit city of Palu on the island of Sulawesi.
“I can still hear the voice of the survivors screaming for help while inspecting the compound,” he said, adding there could be 50 people trapped inside.
Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told a news conference that the death toll had reached 832, with nearly all of those killed in Palu. He said authorities were still waiting for reports about casualties in surrounding coastal areas.
The nearby cities of Donggala and Mamuju were also ravaged, but little information was available due to damaged roads and disrupted telecommunications.
Nugroho said “tens to hundreds” of people were taking part in a beach festival in Palu when the tsunami struck at dusk on Friday local time. Their fate was unknown.
Looters were stealing what ever they could from a badly damaged mall in Palu that was not being guarded. They did not appear to be concerned about their safety, despite ongoing aftershocks and the structure's questionable stability.
Residents were also seen returning to their destroyed homes, picking through waterlogged belongings, trying to salvage anything they could find.
Hundreds of people were injured and hospitals, damaged by the magnitude 7.5 quake, were overwhelmed.
Some of the injured, including Dwi Haris, who suffered a broken back and shoulder, rested yesterday outside Palu’s Army Hospital, where patients were being treated outdoors due to continuing strong aftershocks. Tears filled his eyes as he recounted feeling the violent earthquake shake the fifth-floor hotel room he shared with his wife and daughter.
“There was no time to save ourselves. I was squeezed into the ruins of the wall, I think,” said Haris, adding that his family was in town for a wedding. “I heard my wife cry for help, but then silence. I don’t know what happened to her and my child. I hope they are safe.”
It’s the latest natural disaster to hit Indonesia, which is frequently struck by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis because of its location on the “Ring of Fire”, an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin. In December 2004, a massive magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra island in western Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries. Last month, a powerful quake on the island of Lombok killed 505 people.
Palu, which has more than 380,000 people, was strewn with debris from the earthquake and tsunami. A mosque heavily damaged by the quake was half submerged and a shopping mall was reduced to a crumpled hulk. A large bridge with yellow arches had collapsed. Bodies lay partially covered by tarpaulins.
The city is built around a narrow bay that apparently magnified the force of the tsunami waters as they raced into the tight inlet.
Indonesian TV showed dramatic smartphone video of a powerful wave hitting Palu, with people screaming and running in fear. The water smashed into buildings and the mosque.
Nina, a 23-year-old woman who goes by one name, was working at a laundry service shop not far from South China Sea MALAYSIA PHILIPPINES
Celebes Sea Banda Sea AUSTRALIA the beach when the quake hit.
She said the quake destroyed her workplace, but she managed to escape and quickly went home to get her mother and younger brother.
“We tried to find shelter, but then I heard people shouting, ‘Water! Water!”’ she recalled, crying. “The three of us ran, but got separated. Now I don’t know where my mother and brother are. I don’t know how to get information. I don’t know what to do.”
Communications with the area were difficult because power and telecommunications were cut, hampering search and rescue efforts. Most people slept outdoors, fearing strong aftershocks.
“We hope there will be international satellites crossing over Indonesia that can capture images and provide them to us so we can use the images to prepare humanitarian aid,” said Nugroho, the disaster agency spokesman.
Indonesia is a vast archipelago of more than 17,000 islands that’s home to 260 million people. Roads and infrastructure are poor in many areas, making access difficult in the best of conditions.
The disaster agency has said that essential aircraft can land at Palu’s airport, though AirNav, which oversees aircraft navigation, said the runway was cracked and the control tower damaged.
AirNav said one of its air traffic controllers, aged 21, died in the quake after staying in the tower to ensure a flight he’d just cleared for departure got airborne safely. It did.
More than half of the 560 inmates in a Palu prison fled after its walls collapsed during the quake, said its warden, Adhi Yan Ricoh.
“It was very hard for the security guards to stop the inmates from running away as they were so panicked and had to save themselves too,” he told state news agency Antara.
“Don’t even think to find the inmates. We don’t even have time yet to report this incident to our superiors,” he said.
Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said on Saturday that he instructed the Security Minister to co-ordinate the Government’s response to the disaster.
Jokowi also told reporters in his hometown of Solo that he called on the country’s military chief to help with search and rescue efforts.