Searching for the buried
AFTER QUAKE AND TSUNAMI: HUNDREDS OF HOUSES SWALLOWED UP
Fear of looting grows and death toll set to soar with areas of Indonesia cut off.
Indonesian 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 and looting fuelled fears of lawlessness.
Officials fear the toll could soar, as most of the confirmed dead were from Palu, a small city 1 500km northeast of Jakarta, while some remote areas have been cut off since Friday’s 7.5 magnitude quake triggered tsunami waves.
The main priorities were to evacuate, find and save victims, Widodo said. He 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 reports from its workers venturing into one cut-off area, Donggala, close to the epicentre, indicated it had been hit “extremely hard”. A video of Donggala, broadcast by Antara state news agency, showed widespread destruction, including flattened buildings and a ship that had been hurled into port buildings by the tsunami.
Four badly hit districts of Sulawesi, one of the archipelago nation’s five main islands, have a combined population of about 1.4 million. In Palu, six-metre high tsunami waves smashed into the beachfront, while hotels and shopping malls collapsed. Some neighbourhoods were swallowed up by ground liquefaction, which happens when soil shaken by an earthquake behaves like a liquid. About 1 700 houses in one neighbourhood disappeared beneath the mud, with hundreds of people believed buried, the national disaster agency said. – Reuters